So if you're still feeling shell-shocked from the election, you probably won't want to read the latest election study by the Institute for Women's Policy Research. According to IWPR's findings, women's decreased support for the democratic ticket in Ohio is one likely culprit for why the state went red.

"In 2004, 50 percent of women in Ohio voted for Kerry, a drop from the 53 percent who supported Gore in 2000. If Kerry had maintained Gore’s level of support among women, and won half of Nader’s 2000 votes from women, he would have won an additional 120,000 votes from Bush. Assuming that Bush also picked up half of Nader’s votes from women, Kerry’s gain would have resulted in a victory of approximately 107,000 votes in the state."

The same thing goes for Iowa and New Mexico. Kerry only got 51% of women voters in Iowa (compared to Gore's 54%) and 49% in New Mexico (compared to Gore's 54%). (sigh). IWPR also contends that if Kerry had maintained Gore's national level of women voters (Gore 54% / Kerry 51%), Kerry would have won the popular vote by almost 1.4 million votes.

While, IWPR's study was based on exit polls (and doesn't account for a margin of error), the study still raises *a bunch* of issues. LIKE, who are the women who switched tickets in this election? Who are the voters that honestly felt like "W Stands for Women"? Bush managed to build his appeal to women, and I want to know *how*.

Some possibilities: Rep. Jan Schakowsky, chair of the Democratic National Committee's Women Lead project, claims that it's because Republicans succeeded in their "concentrated campaign to scare women." (i.e. the security moms voted). Ann Lewis, chief of the DNC's Women's Vote Center, believes that it's because Republicans did a better job in getting new women voters to the polls. (i.e. the evangelical women voted). Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg chalked it up to the married ladies--"The gap between how white unmarried women voted compared to white married women is a gigantic gap." And of course there are the crazies at the IWF who announced that the electoral gender gap "collapsed" because of feminists' lack of moral values. Ummm, yeah.

The two things I keep thinking about: (1) why did only 51% of white women vote for Kerry compared to 75% of women of color?, and (2) why did voting by single women only rise by 4%? Any thoughts?