If unmarried women turned out in force for elections, they could shape the results. But they don’t.

It’s a tantalizing problem, especially for Democrats, whom unmarried women tend to favor. If the 20 million who didn’t vote in 2004 had turned out, John Kerry would be in the White House, based on figures released Wednesday by a liberal get-out-the-vote group that specializes in women.

If they’d even turned out at the same rate as married women, Kerry probably would’ve won.

Unmarried women are “by far the most Democratic base, except for African-Americans,” said Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg, the chief executive officer of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, which conducted the survey.

“We ought to be looking at this” as a political opportunity, he added.

About 54 million women in the U.S. aren’t married, nearly half of all voting-age women, according to Greenberg. His survey, sponsored by the “Women’s Voices. Women Vote. Action Fund,” explored the reasons that 20 million single women elected not to vote in 2004.

Greenberg concluded from a survey of 1,509 unmarried women that they:

¢ Doubt that their votes would make a difference.

¢ Worry most about the war in Iraq, followed by health care, then the economy and jobs.

¢ Earn much less than men or married women. Half of unmarried women are in households that earn less than $30,000 a year.

¢ Disapprove of President Bush by a 2-to-1 ratio.

¢ Move more often than married women and are less likely to own their homes.

¢ Are more likely than unmarried men to think that politics are too complicated to understand.

¢ Ignore mainstream media, so they’re more difficult to reach through TV ads.

¢ Respond better to political ads that are framed in terms of issues and facts than to negative ads or ads that stress political party identity.