Had only married women been allowed to vote in the 2006 elections, Republicans might still control the House of Representatives.

Fifty percent of married women voting in those elections, the network exit poll revealed, opted for a Republican candidate for the House. Only 48 percent went for a Democratic candidate.

On the other hand, had only unmarried women been allowed to vote, the House today might be almost entirely composed of Democrats. While 53 percent of the overall vote in U.S. House races in 2006 went to Democrats, 66 percent of the unmarried-woman vote went to Democrats.

What does this super-majority of unmarried women want? More government.

Or, put another way: They want the government to tax money away from married couples and give that money to them in the form of government entitlements.

Or, put another way: They want socialism. Or, as the Democratic polling firm of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner put it in a report published on Oct. 31, "They want and need government to make their lives just a bit easier."

There is an ominous change taking place in American culture that could revolutionize our politics, making it more difficult to sustain our free-market system and our tradition of self-reliance, driving more people into government dependency. This change is the decline in marriage and traditional family life.

Democrats sense an opportunity in this decline. It could boost their political prospects tremendously. "The growing political importance of unmarried women is undergirded by a demographic shift that is fundamentally changing America," Greenberg Quinlan Rosner reported.

"Between 1960 and 2006, the percentile of the voting age population (as opposed to households) that was unmarried increased from 27 to 47 percent," the firm said. "If the current trend continues, the unmarried population will become a majority in the next 15 years. And while the number of married Americans aged 21-54 years is dropping in absolute terms for the first time ever, the number of unmarried couples who cohabitate and the number of women living without a spouse are on the rise."

The polling firm sees a potential 2008 windfall for the Democrats among unmarried women especially. It describes them as "easily the largest segment of the Democratic base." Continued...