If only they had nominated a more conservative candidate
by David Atkins
Much has been written already about the Gallup results showing President Obama up by 9 over Mitt Romney in a poll of twelve battleground states. The lead is largely due to an overwhelming 60%+ lead by Obama among women under the age of 50--a major shift since mid-February when less than half of women under 50 supported the President:
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 two 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 while Romney's support among them has dropped by 14 points, to 30%. The president leads him 2-1 in this group.
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 nine points or 10 points," says Sara Taylor Fagen, a Republican strategist and former political adviser to President George W. Bush. "The focus on contraception has not been a good one for us … and Republicans have unfairly taken on water on this issue." [ed. note: "unfairly"? Really?]
In the poll, Romney leads among all men by a single point, but the president 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.
The usual caveats apply, of course: it's very early, these numbers will shift back and forth and up and down many times before November, et cetera. But let's postulate that the numbers in November end up similar to what we're seeing now in terms of the demographic split, and that Obama notches a moderately easy victory over Romney largely due to women.
The guaranteed conservative reaction to a Romney defeat will be to claim that they would have won with a true conservative candidate, and that nominating a "liberal" like Romney guaranteed their defeat. They would have all sorts of potential and circumstantial evidence to back that up.
But the gender disparity doesn't lie. Women hate Santorum and Gingrich more than they hate Romney. "True" conservatives play to the FreeRepublic/Limbaugh audience, which is overwhelmingly older and especially male. There is no way a candidate can win an election if they lose 6 in 10 women and younger voters.
More importantly, a party that banks increasingly exclusively on older white men for its votes is in increasingly dire straits. Digby posted recently about how the 2006 and 2008 elections may have been a mere interregnum in an era of conservative dominance. I would suggest a potential alternative: a slowly but increasingly progressive electorate, especially if you excise the amazingly retrograde phenomenon of the Deep South. One that elected Bill Clinton twice, that elected Al Gore but for a theft by the Supreme Court, and one that only barely elected conservatives based on the historical accidents of the 9/11 attacks and a cynical Mediscare backlash against a bitterly fought healthcare overhaul during a wretched economy.
From 2000 to August 2001, the Bush presidency was something of a joke. He barely held on for dear life in 2004 just a year after marshaling the nation into the invasion of Iraq, despite near comical reliance on terror alerts. In 2006 the Republicans got creamed and then once again in 2008 through the election of an African-American named Barack Hussein Obama. The fact that we're used to that name by now doesn't make it any less remarkable. Yes, there was 2010, but pundits famous and obscure alike often forget that the balance of 2010 was largely tipped by angry and scared elderly folks who bought into the Republican line that Obamacare was going to kill their Medicare and institute death panels in order to subsidize free medical care for lazy layabouts. It was not the pure conservative tea party backlash as it is often described.
Republicans have gotten some unusual lucky breaks over several cycles in the last decade and a half. But the general trend under normal circumstances looks very bad for them, and the latest Gallup polling only reinforces it. A party that is getting only more, not less conservative and increasingly reliant on the votes of old white men is a party that is in serious trouble.
That won't stop them from blaming their potential 2012 defeat on having nominated an inadequately conservative candidate, though. That's what people in denial do.
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