Women Voters

19 September 2008 |permalink | email article

Data in a New York Times/CBS News Poll (Sept. 12-16) offers interesting clues about women — a larger voter bloc than men — before and after the recent national party conventions:

Barack Obama

All women: + 9%
White women: +10%
Women under 45: +15%
Age 45 or older: +6%

John McCain

All women: 38%/38% 0%
White women: +1%
Women under 45: -2%
Age 45 or older: +4%
White women were evenly divided between McCain and Obama. Before the conventions McCain led Obama among white women, 44% to 37%.

The poll suggested that to date the selection of Sarah Palin has helped McCain only among Republican base voters; there was no evidence of significantly increased support for him among women in general.

As for why McCain chose Palin most voters (75%) said it was to help him win while 17% said she was well-qualified. By contrast 57% said Joe Biden was well-qualified.

On the Trail

Americans had every right to expect President Bush might leave the bunker and show command presence with a prime-time address to reassure the nation about the gravity of Wall Street meltdown – arguably the most serious since the Great Depression. Instead, he spoke yesterday morning for two minutes, reprised the obvious and looked like a frightened deer caught in the headlights.

McCain, the great deregulator turned sudden Wall Street scold, never mentions the Republican Party or Bush any more. Is anybody surprised?

An aroused Obama gets in a stinging zinger about more or less deregulation: ”McCain can’t decide whether he’s Barry Goldwater or Dennis Kucinich.”

 

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