A new survey released today by Women’s Voices, Women Vote (WVWV), a non-partisan project, says that Bush and Kerry are not discussing issues that resonate with unmarried women--like health care and equal pay. And guess what: despite what the media has been feeding us lately, 40& of unmarried women want to hear less about terrorism.

Almost two-thirds of the women polled (61 percent) want to hear more about affordable healthcare, and nearly three-quarters want to hear candidates talk more about equal pay between men and women (73 percent), and about a higher minimum wage (75 percent). Two out of three women polled also want to hear more from presidential candidates about retirement security (64 percent) and more educational opportunities (63 percent).

Page Gardner, co-director of WVWV says, "The security issues these women want to hear about are economic security, health care security and retirement security. The candidates are missing an important opportunity to engage and mobilize this huge cohort of 22 million non-voting women who overwhelmingly say they are certain to vote this year. Unmarried women are a most important voting bloc and candidates cannot afford to ignore them."

Word. Let’s hope they listen.