The figures reveal that 90 percent of black Americans voted for Gore. The mere application of that advantage contributes to the unmarried-women Democratic figure. But blacks are only 10 percent of the voters, which means that 90 percent of the plurality has to be otherwise accounted for.
Then ask: Isn't it possible that unmarried women find themselves, in the absence of a husband, relying on somebody else to help with the usual social anxieties? Health care and Social Security predominantly, but also, for a considerable number, education? Single mothers procreate a great many children, and these need to be educated.
The impression given by modern Democrats is that it is they who hold out a hand to aid the disadvantaged at every level: somebody there at the hospital at time of birth, somebody at the schoolhouse to teach the kids, somebody to give them drugs as required, somebody to look after her in her old age. What's his name? Not Daddy. It's Uncle Sam.
Does this reasoning apply to widows? They are "unmarried women." But it is likelier that they will have been provided for by their dead husbands, and trained to rely less on government than on personal resources.
The GOP can't reasonably be expected to promote a campaign to get husbands for unmarried women. But short of that, Republicans have to come up with something. It isn't as easy as to reverse its position on abortion: Reagan did just fine simultaneously (a) opposing abortion, and (b) attracting the backing of unmarried women.
At the least, future Republican strategists could openly address the question. They try to appeal to Jewish voters by cosseting Israel, to Catholic voters by church/state rescue missions, blacks by civil-rights militancy, Hispanics by social hospitality. The unmarried woman can selectively be singled out for attention at least to the point of acknowledging that she exists, and ought to adopt the GOP for her otherwise childless household.