“Governor-Elect Cuccinelli’s Stunning Upset”

“Governor-Elect Cuccinelli’s Stunning Upset.”

That’s the headline we’d be reading today if unmarried women had voted the same way as married women in yesterday’s Virginia gubernatorial election.

According to exit polling from Edison Media Research, 67% of unmarried women voted for Democrat Terry McAuliffe, compared to 25% for Republican Ken Cuccinelli. But among married women, Cuccinelli won, garnering 51% of their vote to McAuliffe’s 42%.

We crunched those numbers and came to this stunning conclusion: If unmarried women had voted the same way as married women, Ken Cuccinelli wouldn’t have just won the election—he’d have won it in a walk, with a 149,000-vote, 6.7% cushion. So it’s not an exaggeration to say that unmarried women decided Virginia’s 2013 gubernatorial election.

The electoral power of unmarried women is something the politicians might want to keep in mind going into the 2014 and 2016 elections, where control of Congress and the White House will be at stake.

We’ve come up with this quick infographic to spread the word about the importance of unmarried women… please feel free to share it on your social networks, or just share or retweet our Facebook and Twitter posts.