Women May Call Election

Four years ago, Susan O’Hare backed Al Gore for president. Still, she was grateful George W. Bush was in charge on Sept. 11, 2001.

“I felt very safe with Bush for many months after 9/11,” said the 49-year-old paralegal. Slowly, however, O’Hare soured on the incumbent, as Iraq spiraled into chaos.

Now, she plans to vote for Sen. John F. Kerry on Nov. 2, even though she thinks he is making a lot of promises he probably can’t keep. “My thinking is it’s got to be better than what’s going on right now,” said O’Hare, pausing near Colorado’s gold-domed Capitol on a sunny afternoon this week.

The gender gap may be reemerging, thanks to voters like O’Hare, perpetuating the Mars-Venus political divide between men, who lean Republican, and women, who lean Democratic, that has been a fixture of presidential politics since Ronald Reagan beat Jimmy Carter a generation ago. But the size of the gap remains in question -- and the answer may determine who wins on Nov. 2.

Democrat Al Gore carried the women’s vote by 11 percentage points in 2000. This year, however, polls for a time showed Bush running even with or better than Kerry among women, as terrorism and domestic security crowded out healthcare, the economy and other bread-and-butter concerns.

But after his strong debate performances, some recent surveys -- though not all -- have shown Kerry regaining the traditional Democratic edge among women. Bush continues to lead among male voters, according to all polls, though his support has dropped from four years ago among those with a college education.

“The hope all along has been that Kerry would perform better among men than Democrats have in the recent past,” said Jim Jordan, a party strategist who managed Kerry’s campaign for part of the primary season. “But right now, it looks like things are rounding out sort of to familiar form.”

Which means that, barring a sudden turnabout among men, Kerry will probably have to win a sizable majority of the women’s vote to capture the White House.

“Anything short of about what Gore did is going to be very, very dangerous for Kerry,” said Carroll Doherty, editor of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, “Right now, he’s right at that measure.”

A poll released by the center Wednesday showed the presidential race tied, with Kerry leading by 10 percentage points among women, who traditionally represent a larger share of the electorate than males, while trailing Bush by 11 points among men.

The other polls showing Kerry ahead among women gave him a smaller advantage.

Continuing efforts to shore up his support, Kerry on Friday delivered a speech in Milwaukee aimed at working women, saying they are putting in longer hours and “falling further and further behind.”

“Today, for far too many women, the American Dream seems a million miles away, because you’ve barely got time to sleep, and when you’ve barely got time to sleep, you’ve barely got time to dream,” said Kerry, who called for a higher minimum wage, equalizing pay for men and women doing the same job and expanding the availability of healthcare.

In 2000, nearly 8 million more women than men went to the polls nationwide. They voted in greater numbers in 17 of the 18 hardest-fought states (lagging behind men by just 0.2% in West Virginia.) This year, dozens of groups are working to boost women’s turnout even higher.

The candidates have taken note. Just this week, both sides launched ads featuring mothers and daughters. Bush regularly touts education reform and cites the strong women around him -- including First Lady Laura Bush. He also says he has a better record of appointing women to high positions than any president before.

And, of course, Bush has campaigned heavily on his record fighting terrorism and warning of future attacks, perhaps the ultimate hit-home security issue. The Pew poll, which has been surveying attitudes since the Sept. 11 attacks, consistently finds that woman worry more than men about another terrorist strike and also place the issue higher on their list of voting priorities.

For some women “their filter before had all been based on healthcare and the economy, and now there’s this other powerful dimension,” said GOP pollster Bill McInturff. “There’s no question the president has performed better as a consequence.”

But McInturff echoed others who dismissed the notion that a surge of “security moms” -- this year’s catchy voter label -- would swing the election. Women who base their votes on defense and national security first are probably Bush supporters already, analysts in both parties agree.

The analysts also say that the discussion of gender politics is often rife with stereotypes and overstatements.

“The gender gap has always been a little more layered than it looked,” said Carol Hardy-Fanta, an expert on women’s politics at the University of Massachusetts. She pointed out, for instance, that “white suburban middle-class women ... have always been a little more conservative than poorer women and women of color.”

Analysts say a much better barometer of voting behavior is marital status, with married women voting more like Republican-leaning men and single women -- along with single men -- leaning Democratic.

For Barbara Breslin, 58, terrorism ranks below taxes on her list of concerns. “I don’t think that’s the solution to stimulate the economy, to get the government even more involved,” she said, while waiting to meet her daughter at Denver’s upscale Cherry Creek Mall.

Although she thought Kerry outperformed Bush in the debates, she supports the president because she views the Democrat’s record as “very, very, very liberal in terms of increasing taxes.”

Winning the women’s vote is far less critical for Bush than Kerry, who angered many women’s activists by ignoring issues such as abortion and equal pay as he touted his Vietnam War service and tried to out-tough Bush over the summer on terrorism.

When polls in mid-September showed his support among women lagging, Kerry began talking more about domestic matters. He popped up on “Dr. Phil” and “Live With Regis and Kelly,” where he talked about his work more than 20 years ago establishing a rape-counseling program while he was a prosecutor in Massachusetts. He touted the endorsement of several Sept. 11 widows and started campaigning alongside Kristin Breitweiser, one of the group’s most outspoken critics of Bush, who also appears in a Kerry TV ad.

Perhaps most importantly, he talked up domestic concerns in his debates with Bush, calling for expanded stem-cell research, allowing importation of prescription drugs and appointing Supreme Court justices who would keep abortion legal.

“We saw in the debate, especially the last one or two, there was more mention of women’s issues,” said Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation, who last month criticized Kerry for not campaigning hard enough for women’s support.

Kerry’s debate performance also seems to have solidified the support of voters like Gayle Atherton, who was turned off long ago by Bush but hadn’t mustered much enthusiasm for his opponent.

“I thought Kerry handled himself exceptionally well,” said the 57-year-old sales clerk, who was reading a romance novel on her break outside Lord and Taylor at the Cherry Creek Mall. “He answered questions in a manner that made me believe that he really does feel about the issues I’m worried about.”