By Dave Andrusko
I’d meant to write about this yesterday, but time got away from me. Gallup has confirmed what we’ve written about many times at NRL News Today: the “gender gap” is working to the advantage of pro-life Mitt Romney.
That is counter-intuitive if we think the way the term formerly was meant: exclusively how much women supported candidate “a” over candidate “b.” In reality there is also a “gender gap” when it comes to whom men support.
Here’s the opening paragraph from “Gender Gap in Election Fueled More by Men than Women: Romney leads Obama among male likely voters by 14 points,” by Gallup’s Frank Newport.
“PRINCETON, NJ — Despite the great attention paid to the importance of the women’s vote in the 2012 election, there has been a larger change in men’s than in women’s preferences compared with 2008. Barack Obama’s support is down seven percentage points among men versus three points among women. In Gallup’s latest 21-day rolling average of likely voter preferences, based on interviewing conducted Oct. 1-21, Romney leads Obama by 14 points among men, whereas Obama and John McCain were tied among men in Gallup’s final pre-election estimate in 2008. Obama currently leads Romney by eight percentage points among women, whereas he led McCain by 14 among women in 2008.”
Put another way, Obama has lost support among both men and women but even more so among men.
Not so long ago, supposedly Romney trailed among women by a gigantic margin. Now, according to Gallup, the deficit is at eight points. My guess is the number may be even smaller and diminishing by the day.
One other consideration. On October 17, NRL News Today wrote about a Gallup survey. Women in 12 swing states were asked (as Newport explains) “to name most important women’s issues in this election, and the results showed ‘abortion’ and ‘equal rights’ to be in the top five, along with jobs, healthcare, and the economy.” However, “an analysis of women’s responses to a separate question asking about the most important problem facing the nation — without specific mention of ‘women’s issues’ — shows that women’s responses do not differ substantively from men’s in most instances,” Newport writes.
Keep tuned.