(FORTUNE Small Business) – When she talks about politics, Hattie Bryant, a TV producer in San Diego, sounds like a typical entrepreneur--a majority of whom lean Republican, according to polls. "We need fewer liberals in Washington," says Bryant, 53--who lists her four top election issues as national security, taxes, taxes, and taxes. On the other side of the country, technology consultant Nell Cote expresses views in sync with women voters, most of whom tend to favor Democratic candidates. Cote, 43, worries that President Bush's approach to the war on terror is putting her children at risk. Cote recently sold a New York City apartment and knows that if she were to sell her business she would keep a bigger chunk of the proceeds thanks to the Bush tax cuts. "But that's not what's important," she says.

Bryant and Cote don't agree on much, yet they have something important in common. Both are female small-business owners--a fast-growing and newly influential group of swing voters being vigorously courted by both the Bush and Kerry presidential campaigns. As our story on page 47 illustrates, female entrepreneurship is one of the great success stories of our time. Women today control just under half of all the small businesses in America. In the past seven years the number of woman-owned firms with employees has grown by 28%--three times the growth rate among all employer firms. Today woman business owners represent about 5% of the voting-age population--more than all the registered voters in Florida and more than enough to select our next President.

Although male entrepreneurs tend to be reliably Republican, and women in general strongly Democratic, neither assumption can be made about female business owners. As business owners, women tend to focus on bottom-line issues such as taxes and deregulation. But an exclusive FSB/Zogby Interactive poll found them more likely than their male counterparts to emphasize social issues such as abortion, the environment, and heath care. "Woman entrepreneurs are the wild card in this election," says Erin Fuller, executive director of the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO) in McLean, Va.

Take Joanna Lau, a 45-year-old defense contractor who made her first fortune manufacturing guidance systems for the U.S. Army's Bradley Fighting Vehicle. Lau is a registered independent who voted for both George Bushes. But she favors Kerry this year, partly because she blames the Bush administration for not steering more federal contracts to woman entrepreneurs and partly because of the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal. "What's human rights if we treat prisoners like that?" Lau asks.

In the 1990s political strategists began using the term "soccer moms" to describe suburban women who tend to be liberal on social issues but conservative on taxes and economic policy. Both major parties labored to pull these classic swing voters into their camp. In the most bitterly contested presidential race since, well, the last one, there's evidence that female entrepreneurs could be the soccer moms of 2004. "Woman business owners are subject to political crosscurrents that make them attractive to both parties," says Democratic pollster Geoff Garin.

Even though the Bush administration cut the Small Business Administration's funding by 25% and eliminated the SBA administrator's cabinet seat, woman small-business advocates feel that the Republicans have done a better job of reaching out to them lately. "Clinton would come to town and never call us," says Marsha Firestone, president of the New York-based Women Presidents Organization (WPO). "Bush always calls. We're at the table as small-business owners." President Bush has given two major speeches to female entrepreneur audiences in the past year. In May his campaign launched a "W Stands for Women" initiative that stressed the economic contributions of woman business owners.

Senator Kerry has been doing his best to close this perception gap. In a May conference call with nearly 2,000 woman entrepreneurs across the country, Kerry said that women aren't getting "the recognition they deserve for the opportunities they are providing to millions of employees, the contributions they make to communities, and the overall strengthening of our economy." Kerry had recently shepherded his press entourage to a woman-owned stonecutting company in Louisville--one of several such appearances during his campaign--where he noted his years of leadership on the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship committee.

Unlike the diffuse ranks of soccer moms, woman entrepreneurs are an increasingly articulate and organized political force. "Building coalitions is something women are good at," says Fuller. Today an alphabet soup of nonpartisan advocacy groups--NAWBO, the WPO, and Women Impacting Public Policy, to name just three--are sponsoring voter-registration drives and are jawboning federal officials to increase the share of government contracting dollars for woman-owned businesses (currently just 2.9%, well below the mandated federal goal of 5%). "We're tired of being nice about this contracting thing," says NAWBO political action committee chair Sallie Mullins Thompson, a registered Republican who won't say how she plans to vote in November.

At this stage, the woman-owned-business vote is up for grabs. The FSB/Zogby Interactive survey shows that half of all female entrepreneurs (50%) favor Kerry over Bush (44%). Yet small majorities of women hold unfavorable views of both Bush (54%) and Kerry (53%). Both candidates are trying to convince woman business owners that their platforms balance core business priorities, such as tax relief and access to capital, with the social issues that matter most to women.

As evidence of his caring conservatism, Bush touts association health plans that would allow multiple small businesses to pool risk across regulatory lines. Kerry argues that Bush's plan allows insurers to exclude high-risk employees such as those with chronic illnesses. Instead, Kerry favors giving small businesses access to the health plan used by Congress, and he wants the federal government to cover the catastrophic medical costs that can cripple a smaller company. He would pay for his plan in part by rolling back the Bush tax cuts for individuals who earn more than $200,000 a year, a proposal that puts him at odds with many of the most successful woman entrepreneurs. Kerry must also persuade entrepreneurs of both genders who are skeptical of his position on the inheritance tax (he favors higher exemptions but not a ban) and his support for a higher minimum wage. He makes a start on that effort in an exclusive interview with FSB, immediately following this story. (FSB has repeatedly asked President Bush to sit for a similar interview, but so far he has not responded.)