Whether they’re called soccer moms, security moms or hockey moms, women are likely to play a key role in deciding the outcome of next month’s US presidential election and are being wooed by the candidates.
In the last presidential election, 8.8 million more women voted than men and this time around, with record numbers of women registering to vote in the Nov. 4 contest between Republican Senator John McCain and Democrat Senator Barack Obama, women voters are expected to outpace men by more than 9 million.
And many of them are expected to vote for Obama.
“All of the national polls conducted since the first [presidential] debate report Senator Barack Obama in the lead ... almost all show women supporting Obama at a higher level than men,” a report issued on Friday by the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) at Rutgers University in New Jersey said.
GENDER GAP
Since 1992, more women have voted Democrat than Republican in presidential elections, and even when a majority of women backed Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984, the women’s vote for him trailed the men’s by several percentage points.
That phenomenon is called the gender gap and it exists because “women and men clearly preference their issues differently, and those different preferences have aligned recently along partisan lines,” said Allyson Lowe, head of the Pennsylvania Center for Women, Politics and Public Policy at Chatham University in Pittsburgh.
Women are more likely than men to support a larger role for government, and the Democratic Party offers that, CAWP director Debbie Walsh said.
“Women are more economically vulnerable than men, more often in a day-to-day struggle ... and because of that, they see themselves as needing a social safety net with programs like social security, Medicaid, family leave,” she said.
Pundits have speculated that McCain chose pro-life, “hockey mom” of five Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate to woo women, in particular those who were disappointed when Obama passed over Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in favor of Senator Joseph Biden to fill the Democratic Party’s vice presidential slot.
But women, like men, vote on the issues, and key to winning the women’s vote is identifying which issues matter to them.
In 2000, a group of women who were labeled “soccer moms” by pollsters and who voted based on family value issues helped to ensure US President George W. Bush’s first victory, Lowe said.
“Some of those women voted Bush again in 2004 but got relabeled ‘security moms’ because they told the pollsters they were more worried about the safety of their families and the security of the nation than about education and healthcare,” she said.
“Same women, new label. They voted for Bush both times, but for different reasons,” said Lowe, as she wondered if the soccer-turned-security moms would morph into pro-life, family-oriented hockey moms next month — and vote Republican.
Recent studies suggest they won’t, as they point to housing and healthcare as the top two issues on the minds of women who identify with neither the Democratic nor the Republican Party. An overwhelming majority of women voters who spoke to Agence France Presse — 85 percent — said the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were the key issue they want the next president to address, while around three-quarters mentioned the economy and half cited healthcare. None — not even those who said they intend to vote Republican — said their vote had been won by the Palin pick.
Dianne Winiarz, 45, a registered independent who works as at a large bank in Massachusetts, said she would vote for the Republican ticket, even though she found McCain’s choice of running mate “curious” and was “not thrilled” with either party’s candidates.
“This will be the first time I vote Republican in a presidential election,” she said. “I have always voted Democrat but Obama is too far to the left for me.”
PAPAGIANNOPOULOS
Tina Papagiannopoulos, a 37-year-old lawyer from Maryland also registered as independent, said she would vote for Obama because “he is right on the money with respect to what is causing our country’s problems and how to fix them.”
Christine, a 47-year-old stay-at-home mother in Colorado with three soccer-playing children, will also be voting for Obama.
“McCain wants to stay the course in Iraq, and while I don’t support a sudden and full pull-out of American troops, we need an exit strategy,” said Christine, an independent voter who asked not to be fully named.
“Also, I’m pro-choice. Women have aborted pregnancies for centuries and will continue to do so. There needs to be a safe option, as opposed to back-alley abortions,” she said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS