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By using PRIZM-NE, Claritas Corporation's lifestyle segmentation system, together with zipcodes collected during USA Today-CNN Gallup polling, the authors were able to analyze geographical and socioeconomic data. They were then able to profile such specific groups as Catholics or seniors with greater detail, not just the usual groupings used such as male vs female and white vs black. They found for example that veteran status was more indicative of politics than age. They also showed that the gap between the political attitudes of married vs unmarried women reached a record 38 percent, which was much larger than the 11 percent gap between men and women. Such data have traditionally only been available after exit polls, but the USA-Today team were able to track changes during the lead-up to the 2004 election.