Female registered voters favor Obama over McCain by 16 points.
The economic crisis has been stretching the voting gender gap in favor of Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama.
Polls from mid-October show women, already more inclined to vote Democratic, embracing Obama with growing vigor, a trend that political analysts attribute to an economic crisis that is leaving women feeling acutely vulnerable to threats to their jobs, health care and financial stability.
A Gallup poll from Sept. 7, the day the federal government took over mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, found female registered voters favoring Obama by 49 percent compared to 42 percent for his rival, Republican Sen. John McCain.
Following a six-week period when bad economic news dominated the headlines, that lead of seven percentage points widened to 16 points, according to an Oct. 26 Gallup poll. Women favored Obama 54 percent to 38 percent. Men, by contrast, were split almost equally between the two candidates.
"He's going to need that women's vote in order to win," said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey in New Brunswick.
The Obama campaign is courting donations from women as well as votes. It held a fundraiser Oct. 10 and 11 in Chicago billed as the National Women's Leadership Issues Conference, where panels included Democratic stars like Robert Rubin and Madeleine Albright. About 1,000 women paid $2,500 to attend. A $28,500 donation guaranteed a meeting with Oprah Winfrey.
Women have given Obama more than $75 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan Washington research group which tracks money in politics. Men donated almost $122 million.
McCain received $34 million from women and almost $88 million from men, according to the center.
If past patterns continue, more women will turn out than men in a year when voters, in general, are expected to turn out heavily. Women have voted in higher numbers in every presidential election since 1964, and they've voted at higher rates since 1980. In 2004 about 60 percent of women older than 18 voted, compared to 56 percent of men.
Women's greater trust in Obama's approach to the economy was echoed by the Economists' Policy Group for Women's Issues, a network of more than 40 economists from across the country. On Oct. 23 the group released a report card on the two candidates' positions on 10 economic issues critical to women. Obama earned an overall B grade; McCain earned a D.
The group formed in 1992 to evaluate the presidential candidates that year, and this is the first time they've released a report card since that election. Robert Drago, a professor of labor and women's studies at Penn State University, said the group felt the economic crisis had crowded out discussion of women's issues.
Nancy Folbre, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who helped grade the candidates, underscored that point. "We're tired of hearing about the Joes, as in Six-Pack and Plumber," she said. "We want more attention (paid) to the Joannes; the women in our economy who typically earn less money and shoulder more family responsibilities than men."
In the specific category for pay and employment equity McCain earned an F for voting against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act, which would expand the amount of time a worker has to sue for employment discrimination. The act would have countermanded the Supreme Court's 2007 ruling that Goodyear Tire employee Lilly Ledbetter waited too long to sue her employer, even though for years she didn't know the company paid her male counterparts more.
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http://www.alternet.org/election08/105974/financial_crisis_sends_women_voters_flocking_to_obama/
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