Poll: Gender gaps all but gone in White House race
CBS
WASHINGTON What gender gap?
Less than two weeks out from Election Day, Republican Mitt Romney has erased President Obama's 16-point advantage among women, a new Associated Press-GfK poll shows. And the president, in turn, has largely eliminated Romney's edge among men.
Those churning gender dynamics leave the presidential race still a virtual dead heat, with Romney favored by 47 percent of likely voters and Mr. Obama by 45 percent, a result within the poll's margin of sampling error, the survey shows.
After a commanding first debate performance and a generally good month, Romney has gained ground with Americans on a number of important fronts, including their confidence in how he would handle the economy and their impressions of his ability to understand their problems.
At the same time, expectations that Mr. Obama will be re-elected have slipped: Half of voters now expect the president to win a second term, down from 55 percent a month earlier.
For all of the good news for Republicans, however, what matters most in the election endgame is Romney's standing in the handful of states whose electoral votes still are up for grabs. And polls in a number of those battleground states still appear to favor Mr. Obama.
As the election nears, Romney has been playing down social issues and trying to project a more moderate stance on matters such as abortion in an effort to court female voters. The AP-GfK poll, taken Friday through Tuesday, shows Romney pulling even with Mr. Obama among women at 47-47 after lagging by 16 points a month earlier.
But now his campaign is grappling with the fallout from a comment by a Romney-endorsed Senate candidate in Indiana, who said that when a woman becomes pregnant during a rape "that's something God intended."
Romney quickly distanced himself from the remark by Republican Richard Mourdock. But Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the incident was "a reminder that a Republican Congress working with a Republican President Mitt Romney would feel that women should not be able to make choices about their own health care."
A renewed focus on social issues would be an unwelcome development for Romney: Among female likely voters, 55 percent say Mr. Obama would make the right decisions on women's issues, compared with 41 percent who think Romney would.
Romney's pitch to women has been focused squarely on the economy, making the case that what women want most is to ensure their families and their country are on a solid financial footing. The poll shows that message appears to be taking root.
A month ago, women favored Mr. Obama over Romney on the economy 56 percent to 40 percent. Now, the split has shifted to 49 percent for Romney and 45 percent for Mr. Obama.
Similarly, Mr. Obama's lead among women as the candidate who better understands the people's problems has narrowed considerably, from a 58-36 Obama advantage last month to a 50-43 Obama edge now.
Monica Jensen, a 55-year-old independent from Mobile, Ala., says she voted for Mr. Obama in 2008 but will shift her vote to Romney this time, largely because of the economy.
"I'm ready for a change," she said. "I want to see the economy go in a different direction."
Ginny Lewis, a Democrat and 72-year-old retired district attorney from Princeton, Ky., says she'll vote for Romney because "I'm tired of the Republicans blaming all the debt on Democrats, so let them take over and see what they do."
Not that she's optimistic about how that will turn out, though. "I think things will get worse before they get better," she said.
Lindsey Hornbaker, a 25-year-old graduate student and nanny, hasn't been swayed by Romney's charm offensive.
Hornbaker, interviewed Wednesday in Davenport, Iowa, where she was attending an Obama rally, said Romney can tweak his tone but not what she sees as a record focused far more on top income earners and out of touch with most working families.
"I heard him go out of his way to sound so moderate during the debate," she said. "And I thought, 'Who is this? Where did this come from?' He may sound like he's focused on the middle class. But where's the record?"
Mr. Obama, meanwhile, has been working to shore up his support among men, who tend to be more Republican than women. In the 2008 election, men broke 49 percent for Mr. Obama to 48 percent for John McCain, even though Mr. Obama got 53 percent of the vote overall. The president's job approval ratings among men have tended to fall below his ratings among women throughout his first term.
A month ago, Romney's advantage among men was 13 percentage points. Now, it's down to 5 points, with most of the shift toward Mr. Obama coming among unmarried men.
Mr. Obama's election chances hinge on turning out voters like Jon Gerton, a disabled construction worker from Jonesboro, Ark. Gerton's a staunch Obama supporter — but he didn't vote in 2008.
"It takes longer than four years to get things to the point where things are going better," Gerton said. "Four years, it's not very long."
There has been a gender gap in every presidential election since 1980. In 2008, women were 7 percentage points more likely than men to vote for Mr. Obama.
Overall, people are significantly more optimistic about the economy and unemployment in the coming year than they have been at any point in AP-GfK polling going back to March 2011, when the poll first started asking those questions. And likely voters are even more optimistic than other adults.
Nearly six in 10 likely voters think the economy will improve in the next year, up from 46 percent last month. And 42 percent think the number of unemployed Americans will drop in the next year, up from 32 percent in September.
Count Chrysta Walker, of Cedar Lake, Ind., among the voters who are sticking with Obama because they think he's got the right solutions for the fragile economy.
"He's got the middle class at heart," says the 58-year-old Walker. On the economy, she says, Obama "did as well as could be expected because he didn't get a lot of cooperation."
David Bierwirth, who owns an autograph sales business in Las Vegas, turned out at a Romney rally in Henderson this week to show his support for the GOP nominee. To Bierwirth, his vote for Romney is all about the economy.
"I want people back to work," he says, "because then they will buy my products."
The Associated Press-GfK poll was conducted Oct. 19-23 by GfK Roper Public Affairs & Corporate Communications. It involved landline and cell phone interviews with 1,186 adults nationwide, including 839 likely voters. Results for the full sample have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points; for likely voters it is 4.2 points.
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"...See too it that everyone is registered..."
This comment is what is WRONG with Our Nation, this is what creates contempt for the ENTIRE voting process.
Our Constitution gives the RIGHT to ALL CITIZENS 18 years old and greater, to cast a ballot to have their VOICES heard and COUNTED. It does not state ANYWHERE one person-one vote. To have a voice in America you MUST BE A CITIZEN. Natural Born or Naturalized. Voting is a RESPONSIBILITY that has far reaching Ramifications for "narcissistic" actions. This is NOT PARTISAN, this is NOT about one party stealing an election; HOWEVER it is about THEFT! From Johnathan Wallace-
LYING- "I hate being lied to. Short of violence, it is the worst thing you can do to me....The reason that I hate lies is because, like you, I wish to navigate carefully through life, and to do so I must be able to calculate my true position. When you lie to me, you know your position but you have given me false data which obscures mine.
Lying is THEFT. When you tell me something which I take to be true and as a result I invest my time, or my money, or even my care, you have stolen these things from me because you obtained them with false information.
Lying creates inequality. Since YOU also do not like being lied to (I have never known anyone who wanted to be deceived) you have acted as if there were two classes of humans:
YOU, WITH THE RIGHT TO LIE, and everyone else, who must be TRUTHFUL TO YOU so that you too will not lose your way.
Lying treats people as means to the end you wish to accomplish; not as ends in themselves."
EVERY CITIZEN SHOULD DEMAND "TRUTH" in every electoral process. Demand-not request....This is OUR COUNTRY, THESE ARE OUR VOTES to DETERMINE OUR FUTURE!
Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis
Speaking of Ann Coulter, lately she's been calling everyone "RETARDED" who disagrees with her and believes she's a mentally unbalanced, disgustingly screechy, not aging well, psychopathic hag...that's one of the things I dearly love about these right-wing Nazis....they're so damn articulate.
And I find it equally disturbing that a retired district attorney (I only throw that in because you'd think they'd have more intelligence), is going to vote for Romney because she's tired of hearing Republicans blaming the Democrats for all the debt, so she's going to turn it over to the Republicans and see what they can do with it.....only problem with that one is evidently she forgot it was the Republicans who got us into this mess in the first place, and that President Obama, (without Republican cooperation), is slowly but surely digging us out of it.
Perhaps because Romney and Ryan are such consummate liars, and it seems like the entire Republican party has gone completely BATSHIT...excuse me, I meant INSANE, and I kinda believe on the dumber side of brains, that's the type of supporters they are attracting, people just like them....in which case, God save the Queen, and our Republic. Let sanity reign, at least for the next four years.
"What could be more agreeable?"
CH
Women...Obama = 56%
Romney = 41%
15pt lead for Obama
Even the Gallup Poll which has Romney winning, shows an 8pt for Obama amongst Women voters. I think the AP is way off on this one.
You can see it in the desperation of the Obama campaign and the liberal media. I predict a comfortable win for Romney he is ahead in Florida, North Carolina and close in Ohio. Although the unemployment numbers that come out on Nov. 2nd could either be the nail in Obama's coffin if they stay the same or go up even 1/10th of a point, he's toast. If there is a BIG drop (which is not a real number anyway) there is a chance Obama could win.