TomPaine.com today has an interesting article by political psychologist Martha Burk about how important the "Sex and the City" crowd vote will be this fall--single women voters.

Sorry, NASCAR dads, your 15 minutes are up. Single women are the new flavor of the month for the political punditocracy. Inspired by a survey conducted by Democratic pollsters Stan Greenberg and Celinda Lake showing an untapped gold mine of votes among women sans men, the buzz is all about how these babes can swing the election. With 16 million unmarried women now unregistered and 22 million unmarried women who are registered but didn't vote in the last election, this could be a formidable bloc.

According to Burk, 65% of the single women in this country think we are headed in the wrong direction.

Bush will be a tough sell this go-round for moderate women who believed him when he said he was a compassionate conservative. Women know he gave them a bait and switch. He tried to bench those soccer-daughters with an initiative to weaken Title IX. He has dismantled international family planning, even in countries with AIDS epidemics, closed the White House Office on Women's Issues and opened one on faith-based initiatives. That translates into federal dollars going to churches that work against women's rights, most notably in the fundamental right to control their own bodies. The War President is widely expected to tout advances for women in Afghanistan and Iraq as evidence that women should help him get re-elected. Putting aside the debate over whether women in those countries really are better off, the last time I looked, neither group could vote in the USA.

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