Finally. The candidates for president talked about issues that touched real women’s lives – equal pay, health care and contraception, and education. And early evidence is that the debate over the disparity in pay between women and men (women make 77 cents to a man’s dollar) connected with the public. Equal pay and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was one of the top three Google searches during the debate:
President Obama framed pay and health issues not as women’s issues, but as economic, family and middle class issues, affirming research findings released last week by WVWVAF and Democracy Corps.
By PAGE GARDNER and STAN GREENBERG
How do you move 55 million women? Understand what is going on in their lives. Then talk to them about the concerns that keep them up at night and a plan forward to help them achieve the hopes that get them out of bed in the morning.
It’s time to put those post-presidential debate polls that show women shifting on the candidates into perspective. And it’s time to take a closer look at the marriage gap — the difference in voting participation and preferences between married and unmarried women. The group to key on for the next four weeks is single women. They make up more than a quarter of the voting age population and at 55 million strong, they have the power to decide major races in 2012 – if they show up to vote.
In 2008, these women voted overwhelmingly for change.
In celebration of National Voter Registration Day on Tuesday, September 25, the Voter Participation Center (VPC) and Balcony Films have released a new music video and original song, “L.O.V.E. – Let One Voice Emerge,” urging women and other unregistered voters to register, vote and to “let your voice be heard” this November.
“We felt a music video with incredible star power in recognition of National Voter Registration Day would be an attention-getting way to encourage all eligible Americans to participate in our great democracy,” says Page Gardner, President of the Voter Participation Center.
As both campaigns scour for new voters — especially in increasingly crucial Florida — a growing group of experts and a recent Gallup survey suggest that the obsession over single-female voters should shift to the widows and divorcees of the over-65 bracket.
President Obama has been, in political terms, a single-lady killer: the latest Fox News poll of likely voters has Obama leading Romney by 38 points.
Marital status is a key predictor of electoral participation and preferences. And two new polls from Gallup and Democracy Corps strongly reinforce that fact. Married registered voters prefer Republican challenger Mitt Romney over Democratic President Barack Obama by 54% to 39%, according to Gallup data collected from June to August.
by Andrew Dugan
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Married registered voters prefer Republican challenger Mitt Romney over Democratic President Barack Obama by 54% to 39%, according to Gallup data collected from June to August. On the other hand, nonmarried voters break strongly for the president over Romney, 56% to 35%.
By MAGGIE HABERMAN
A new poll of women voters shows the economy as the No. 1 issue among the majority group that decided the last election, with health care and education the second and third major issues.
The poll, conducted jointly by Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway and Democratic pollster Celinda Lake of 1,003 women for Lifetime TV, looks at where women’s attitudes are focused at a time when Democrats are making a social issues-focused push for women voters.
From the poll:
– Women say the candidates’ positions on issues are most influential in deciding their vote for President, well ahead of other considerations like moral character, background and expertise, record in office, political party, and his spouse.
– Women are engaged political citizens, skeptical of politicians but not of the system.
By David Lauter, Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON — With his running mate in place and his nominating convention looming, Republican Mitt Romney narrowly trails President Obama, according to a new nationwide poll of likely voters.
Obama leads 48% to 45% among all registered voters in the survey and by 48% to 46% among those considered likely to vote, according to the USC Annenberg/Los Angeles Times poll on Politics and the Press.
Those results speak to the remarkable stability of the presidential race, in which Obama has held a small lead in most polls since April.
Even with a persistent gender gap in a presidential election year, House Republicans have not given up on their campaign to narrow access to birth control, abortion care and lifesaving cancer screenings. Far from it.
A new Republican spending proposal revives some of the more extreme attacks on women’s health and freedom that were blocked by the Senate earlier in this Congress.
