Last week, a new crop of political ads produced by the College Republican National Committee appeared on television. They featured an imagined female voter, “Brittany,” as a participant on TLC’s reality show “Say Yes to the Dress.” Brittany tries on wedding frocks named for gubernatorial candidates, improbably kvelling “The Rick Scott is perfect” in reference to Florida’s incumbent Republican, over the objections of her fusty mother, a fan of the less-stylish Charlie Crist gown. The College Republicans made identical versions of the ads in six states, which would seem to make Brittany either a polygamist or chronic runaway bride, perhaps not the image Republicans were shooting for.

The spots were—as a stodgy mother-of-the-bride might say—a total hoot! In this age of plunging marriage rates and rising marriage ages, this vision of 20-something-female voters as veil-hounds only reaffirmed how out of touch even the youngest arm of the Republican Party is.

But the ads are notable for reasons that stretch beyond their trafficking in sexist stereotype and grim irony. They are also, critically, the latest iteration of a theme that has obsessed political strategists and commentators on both sides of the partisan divide in recent years: how to assess, and strategize around, the relationship between unmarried women and the elections that they now have the power to decide. And if there was anything fresh and important about those ridiculous “Say Yes to the Candidate” spots, it was that they marked one of the first instances in which conservatives have in any way embraced the idea that women now treat government as a stand-in for husbands.

It’s a move born of total desperation, as the power and partisan preferences of single women voters, an electoral bloc that skews both young and racially diverse, continues to grow.

In 2012, unmarried women made up 23 percent of the electorate; they voted for Barack Obama over Mitt Romney by a whopping 67 to 31 percent. This week, pollster Stan Greenberg offered Democrats a rare smidgen of midterm hope when he turned up a widening gap among unmarried women in 12 battleground states. Overall, according to the poll, Democrats remain behind Republicans by two points, but among single women, Democrats lead by more than 22 percentage points, a number that is twice what it was just two months ago. And while much has been made of unmarried women’s supposed reluctance to show up at polls in non-presidential elections (it’s as if all they care about are wedding dresses and Barack Obama!), in 2013’s tight off-year gubernatorial contest between Virginia Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Ken Cuccinelli, McAuliffe carried unmarried women by what The New York Times called “a staggering 42 percentage points,” and made up 18 percent of the electorate, a wallop that put McAuliffe over the edge.