Saturday, November 1, 2014

Voter Turnout Wins Representation









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Women turn out to support Senator Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado, but The Denver Post criticized his “obnoxious one-issue campaign” about contraceptives. Credit Matthew Staver for The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Democrats are nervously counting on an enduring edge among female voters in most states to prevent a Republican rout in Tuesday’s elections. 

Yet so great is the uncertainty that even before the returns are in, some are second-guessing the party’s strategy of focusing more on issues like abortion and birth control than on jobs and the economy.

The danger for Democratic candidates is that their advantage among women could be so reduced by dissatisfaction with President Obama and the country’s course that it is not enough to offset Republicans’ usual edge among the smaller population of male voters.

Should that happen, a party pollster, Geoff Garin, acknowledged, “They’ll lose.”

But he and other Democratic strategists professed optimism, however tempered, for the party’s imperiled Senate majority, among other things. 

Mr. Garin pointed to surveys of states with the most competitive Senate contests showing that on average Democratic candidates lead among women by about 12 points, while men favor the Republican by an average of nine points. Since women account for more than half the electorate, Democrats theoretically can withstand some erosion of support.






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Cory Gardner, Mr. Udall’s Republican challenger, poses with a supporter. He won The Denver Post’s endorsement. Credit Brennan Linsley/Associated Press

As for the party’s emphasis on women’s issues, he said, “If Democrats weren’t running on these issues, the situation would be much worse.”

“The headwinds that you get from Obama and other factors affect everybody — they don’t only blow in the faces of men,” Mr. Garin added. 

“Even in the face of those headwinds, Democrats are still much better able to succeed with women voters than with men voters.”

In Kentucky and Louisiana, new polls grabbed attention for suggesting that Republican Senate candidates had made inroads with women. 

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate’s Republican leader, was essentially tied among women with the Democratic challenger, Alison Lundergan Grimes, in a Bluegrass Poll taken Oct. 25-29.

But the poll, by SurveyUSA, does not meet polling standards of The New York Times because it was partly conducted using automated phone calls.

Louisiana’s embattled Democratic senator, Mary Landrieu, narrowly led her Republican challenger, Bill Cassidy, among women and men likely to vote by Tuesday, according to a poll conducted Oct. 11-24 by the University of New Orleans Survey Research Center. 

But both groups flipped in Mr. Cassidy’s favor for the expected December runoff election that will be required by state law, assuming neither candidate exceeds 50 percent.

Yet in a number of battleground states for the Senate and for governor, Democrats continue to have enough of an advantage among women to be in contention, even though many of the states are heavily Republican.


Midterm Elections 2014


The latest news, analysis and election results for the 2014 midterm campaign.

That was true for Senate candidates in Colorado, Iowa, Georgia, Arkansas, New Hampshire and North Carolina, recent polls indicated. 

In Iowa, a Democrat, Bruce Braley, had a 12-point advantage among women over his Republican rival, Joni Ernst, who led by 15 percentage points among men, in a poll conducted for CNN/ORC International this week; over all, the two were statistically tied. 

Ms. Ernst has been a particular target of women’s groups because — unlike Cory Gardner in Colorado, another Republican Senate candidate — she has not backed off her support for a “personhood” amendment conferring constitutional rights at conception, which would effectively outlaw abortion and some fertility treatments and birth control methods.

Both parties’ strategists are scouring the rush of final polls and state tallies of early voters to gauge whether Democrats are succeeding at their ambitious goal that has defined this campaign season: persuading and turning out women, particularly minority and unmarried women. 

Those are Democrats’ most reliable supporters, but also the groups most likely to skip voting in a nonpresidential election year. Married white women are more likely to vote, and tilt toward Republicans.

Democrats and allied women’s groups say they are confident the party’s candidates will do better among women than in 2010, the previous midterm election year, when Republicans overall won female voters by a single percentage point and captured a majority of the House and many state legislatures. 

Page Gardner, founder of the Voter Participation Center, which works to increase voting among unmarried women, said single women are more engaged than earlier in the year. 

A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, however, suggested their interest is lower than in recent elections.

“It’s certainly true that we’d be doing better if we were doing better with women, but I do not see a disproportionate drop with women relative to men,” said Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster.

Trends are hard to discern from the array of state and national polls. 

The evidence about women’s leanings is mixed, and sometimes contradictory.







In Arkansas, the Republican candidate, Tom Cotton, was tied with Senator Mark Pryor among women in a poll of likely voters conducted Oct. 4-7 by Fox News. Yet Mr. Pryor had an 11-point edge among women in an Oct. 19-23 poll for NBC News and Marist College’s Institute for Public Opinion.
“On balance, I am not convinced the Democrats will make sufficient inroads with white women to make up for the margin by which they are going to lose white men,” said Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster.

Democrats have not won a majority of white women since 1992.

Tuesday’s results, Mr. McInturff added, would tell “whether it is possible that the single-minded focus that most Democratic candidates attached to the ‘war on women’ meant they never conveyed an economic and jobs message that might have led a higher chunk of the persuadable male vote to vote Democrat.”

Republicans increasingly make that argument that Democrats miscalculated in their zeal to galvanize women who otherwise would not vote in a midterm election — especially since The Denver Post this month endorsed Mr. Gardner, the Republican candidate, for Senate, criticizing the Democratic senator, Mark Udall, for an “obnoxious one-issue campaign” about contraceptives.

Democrats counter that Republicans use the phrase “Republicans’ war on women” more than Democrats to stoke a backlash among older and married women who reject partisan, feminist-sounding rhetoric and lean Republican.

Ms. Greenberg said Republicans were “deliberately misconstruing” Democrats’ legitimate attacks.

Yet she and other Democratic strategists complain their party has not effectively espoused a broader economic agenda, when women tell pollsters their top concern is jobs and the economy.

White House aides say the president has tried to show how to make the case for Democratic policies and to take some credit for the economy’s growth, yet Mr. Obama himself is an unwelcome messenger given his unpopularity.

Nonetheless, on Friday the president was in Rhode Island to speak — as the White House announcement put it — “on the economy and the importance of pursuing policies that help women succeed.”

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