In battleground Wisconsin, a gender-gap debate

GOP social stances alienate women, Obama team says; Romney stresses economy

“We feel confident these numbers will close, and it’s going to close around economic issues.” Romney campaign pollster Neil

Newhouse

PEWAUKEE, Wis. — A trio of women chatting at the reception before the Waukesha County GOP Lincoln Day Dinner Saturday night have some ideas about why President Obama is winning a big advantage among female voters.

“The cult of celebrity,” offers Jacqueline Johannson, a chef from Nashotah.

Democrats effectively “manufactured that issue” about access to contraceptives, scoffs Ardis Cerny, a retiree from Pewaukee.

“It’s social issues,” says Kathryn Jorsch, who owns a small business in Delafield. “They think he’s going to provide a safety net.”

Whatever the reason, a USA TODAY/GALLUP Poll of Wisconsin and 11 other swing states shows Republicans have a women problem.

In the survey, Obama and Republican front-runner Mitt Romney are nearly tied among male voters, but Obama trounces Romney among women. Though Democratic candidates have gotten more support from women than men in every presidential election since 1980, the current difference in support is unusually large and significantly bigger than it was in January and February.

A 12-point gender gap in USA TODAY’S Swing States Poll in January and February has widened to 19 points as a hard-fought GOP primary campaign has ground on and a debate over contraception coverage flared.

Romney strategists insist the outsized gap won’t last once the Republican primary battle ends. “We feel confident these numbers will close, and it’s going to close around economic issues,” campaign pollster Neil Newhouse said in an interview. “When we start talking about gas prices, about the cost of living, about the economic squeeze that these women are living right now in terms of balancing their budgets and putting gas in the car and food on the table, we will hold our own among women.”

Jim Messina, Obama’s campaign manager, says Romney’s endorsement of conservative social issues that affect women will be impossible to shake.

“Romney has doubled down on these positions in the primary,” Messina said in an interview. He notes Romney’s opposition to federal funding for women’s health programs offered by Planned Parenthood and his promise to repeal the federal health care law, which includes provisions promoting preventive care and allowing children to stay on their parent’s policies until age 26. “They’re going to try to Etch A Sketch their way out of it, but he’s taken these positions, and these are his positions.”

Joetta Baker, 62, a fifth-grade teacher from West Bend, Wis., who was called in the poll, says many women react with alarm to efforts by Republicans in Washington and in the state capital, Madison, to “turn the clock back on women’s issues and the gains we made.”

“That’s very disheartening,” she said in a follow-up phone interview. A Democrat, she voted for Obama in 2008 and plans to support him again.

The battleground states surveyed are Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Men and women have somewhat different priorities. In a list of six issues, men rank dealing with the federal budget deficit and national debt as the leading factor affecting their vote; women choose health care. Both rate government policies on birth control at the bottom, but women are much more likely to say they pay attention to that debate; one in four call it an “extremely important” factor for them.

Asked about the GOP candidates’ positions on contraception, most voters say they don’t know enough to assess them, but those who do disagree with Romney and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum by more than 2-1. Those with a view on Obama’s stance divide evenly.

Erica Desimone, 29, a homemaker and mother of three children from Baraboo, Wis., who was among those surveyed, isn’t particularly enthusiastic about the Democrats but has been put off by Republicans. She’s likely to vote for Obama in November. “They’re trying to make decisions for everybody when they don’t agree, kind of forcing their rules and regulations on everybody,” she says of the GOP. “The Republicans are really not on the side of the working poor, as far as that goes. They’re more for the rich.”

At a Romney town-hall-style meeting in Muskego this weekend, supporters of the former Massachusetts governor had some thoughts about what he could do to address the gender gap. Michelle Baron, 48, an IT consultant from Franklin, Wis., supports Romney as “the only candidate that can go up against the Obama machine,” but she worries that he needs to do more to appeal to women to win. Her suggestion: Deploy his wife on the stump.

“I’d like to see Ann get more involved,” she says.

MILWAUKEE — President Obama has opened the first significant lead of the 2012 campaign in the nation’s dozen top battleground states, boosted by a huge shift of women to his side, a USA TODAY/GALLUP Poll finds.

In the fifth Swing States survey taken since last fall, Obama leads Republican front-runner Mitt Romney 51%-42% among registered voters just a month after the president had trailed him by 2 percentage points.

The biggest change came among women under 50. In mid-february, just under half of those voters supported Obama; now more than six in 10 do. Romney’s support among them has dropped by 14 percentage points, to 30%.

Romney’s main advantage is among men 50 and older, swamping Obama 56%-38%.

Republicans’ traditional strength among men “won’t be good enough if we’re losing women by 9 points or 10 points,” warns GOP strategist Sara Taylor Fagen.

In the poll, Romney leads among men by a single percentage point, but Obama leads among women by 18. That reflects a greater disparity between the views of men and women than the 12-point gender gap in the 2008 election.

Obama campaign manager Jim Messina says Romney’s promise to “end Planned Parenthood” — the former Massachusetts governor says he wants to eliminate federal funding for the group — and his endorsement of an amendment that would allow employers to refuse to cover contraception in health care plans have created “severe problems” for him in the general election.

“It would be hard for them to win if you have this kind of gender gap,” Messina says.

Romney pollster Neil Newhouse predicts the gender gap will narrow as Romney moves from the pitched battle of the Republican primaries — Wisconsin, Maryland and the District of Columbia vote Tuesday — to the fall election.

“If there’s a gender gap, it goes beyond Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum to a partisan gender gap,” Newhouse says. “It’s not Romney-specific. . . . It’s broader than that.”

Although women usually are more likely to identify themselves as Democrats than men are, that difference widens to a chasm in the poll. By 41%-24%, women call themselves Democrats; men by 27%-25% say they’re Republicans. -A gender-gap debate brews in Wisconsin, 4A