IIRC, the gender gap goes away if you look at married women. IOW, single women vote for a “husband” who takes care of them and their children. Married women have human husbands.
“WILMINGTON, Del. — Want to know which candidate a woman is likely to support for president?
Look at her ring finger.
It may sound like the start of a bad joke, but the fact is most married women say they’ll vote for President Bush. By nearly 2-to-1, unmarried women say they support John Kerry.
The “marriage gap” — the difference in the vote between married and unmarried women — is an astonishing 38 percentage points, according to aggregated USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Polls.”
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/polls/2004-08-25-female-vote_x.htm
” Unmarried women—a group that includes single, separated, divorced, or widowed women—voted for Obama over Republican opponent John McCain by a whopping 70 to 29 percent in yesterday’s election, according to numbers released today by Women’s Voices Women Vote, a nonpartisan organization.
Married women, by contrast, preferred McCain by a slim 3 percentage-point margin, 50 to 47 percent.”
“Nationally, the President won 55 percent of the women’s vote, but that vote was boosted by a large sub-demographic: unmarried women, who accounted for nearly a quarter of everyone who voted. Governor Mitt Romney won the married women’s vote by 53 percent to Obama’s 46 percent, but Obama won 64 percent of the single women’s vote...”
http://www.crisismagazine.com/2012/the-marriage-gap-in-the-womens-vote
It really is simple: unmarried women think of government as their protector and provider - their husband. They want a big, strong husband: Mr Government!
It is well known that women, in and of themselves, prize security over liberty.
There’s a very good reason conquering hordes throughout history have killed the men and enslaved the women. They kill the men because they have to; they enslave the women because they can.
I'd like to see the breakdown between unmarried (still single and childless) women and unmarried (divorced/"single moms") women. I think it, too, would show a difference, with the former group tending to be more conservative than the latter.