>
> On Tue, 9 Sep 2008, Dwayne Monroe wrote:
>
>> Needless to say, women don't live outside of ideology and are no more
>> resistant to manipulation than their brothers, sons, etc.
...
> Which us brings us to the last thing that would make this appalling if
> true, and perhaps suggests it isn't: historically, choice of VP has made
> extremely little difference to how people vote.
>
> Michael
over 3% a lousy 3% which is inside the margin of error? i don't think that's something to get terribly worked up about. this race has *always* been even. there've been minor bounces, and the republicans pulled the strategy that they pulled in the past -- courting conservative women:
http://www.now.org/issues/election/elections2004/041112womensvote.html
i'm uncomfortable with the gender gap thing as it's used in your post. compare the percentage of women supporters for obama to men supporters of obama and vice versa. that's the gender gap that they've historically measured. not women supporters of the dem compared to women supports of the republican.
in other words, isn't the gender gap still there?
the women who are going for mccain are probably women who weren't sitting on the fence anyway. i seriously doubt, no matter how badly some women of color bloggers want it to be so, that a large number of white women who were once obama supporters are now voting for mccain. a lot of women simply agree with people like mccain and palin. some are going to be wishy washy on mccain and jump for joy over palin because she's probably like them -- or reflects their values in some way. that famous study about women's abortion attitudes, by Kristin Luker, captured a good deal of the sentiment. i'm at work and books are in boxes ay way, but i'm sure a summary of luker's argument is online somewhere.
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