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Rep. Katie True, left, and Lois Herr

 

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"Women are 53 percent of the vote; that's what the exit polls show," said G. Terry Madonna, director of the Franklin & Marshall College Center for Politics & Public Affairs. "There's a lot of women swing voters."

And so the fight is on to sway them. The factors include a former presidential hopeful who nearly seized her party's nomination and a vice presidential candidate who has energized her party's base.

"Maybe we have finally established once and for all that a woman could be a viable candidate for president for either party," said Lois Herr, executive director of the Lancaster County Democratic Committee and member of Democrat Barack Obama's Women's Steering Committee in Pennsylvania.

"But being a woman is not enough in my view. I judge people by their positions on the issues and their individual qualifications for the position."

It's impossible to know exactly how many women are registered voters because the Pennsylvania Department of State doesn't keep tabs on gender breakdown.

However, a Quinnipiac University poll taken at the start of this month underscores how the female vote could be the key to Pennsylvania.

It shows Obama ahead of Republican John McCain overall, but only by 3 percentage points, which is within the margin of error.

If McCain can shrink the margin even more, it would go a long way toward improving his chances of winning Pennsylvania, a state considered vital to his strategy.

State Rep. Katie True, who co-chairs McCain's campaign in Lancaster County, thinks McCain will eventually win the women's vote, in large part because of his choice for vice president, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. She's the second woman on a major party's ticket, the first being Democrat Geraldine Ferraro in 1984.

A lot of women, regardless of party, want to see a woman finally become president or vice president, True said. Obama did himself no favors by choosing Sen. Joe Biden as his running mate instead of his chief rival for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Hillary Clinton, True added.

"Instead, he went a safe route and picked a safe person," True said. "McCain is being seen as someone who doesn't follow the safe path and decided to be bold and take a female. Just on that, it gives him an advantage over someone who talks about change but couldn't bring himself … to ask (Clinton) to be his v.p. nominee."

Madonna and pollster Michael Young noted in a recent analysis piece that nearly one in four former Clinton supporters say they won't back Obama.

Madonna and Young said Palin is even siphoning off the type of women voters Obama would be expected to win.

"Losing the Clinton blue-collar voters is a complication for Obama, but losing the Clinton, suburban, middle-class, college-educated women is a calamity," Madonna and Young wrote. "They are pro-choice and favor gun control, and Palin will not have an easy time attracting them. Yet her appeal is undeniable."

They note the Quinnipiac poll indicates Obama is trailing McCain by 6 points in the Philadelphia suburbs, where a great concentration of suburban, middle class, college-educated women live.

However, Obama's favorables among women are higher than McCain's in the Quinnipiac poll. Nearly 60 percent of women have a high opinion of Obama while just 48 percent view McCain favorably.

True said women should vote based on issues like the economy, health care and national security rather than gender solely, but gender should be "a close second."

"For all women who want to see someone break through the glass ceiling, how bad do you want to see it?" True said. "That's the bottom line."

If McCain wants to close the margin with Obama in the women's vote, Palin has a lot of convincing to do. The poll showed that men rate Palin more favorably than women, and one in three women say they haven't heard enough about her to make up their minds. About a third of male voters, too, are undecided about Palin.

Herr predicted Obama will win the majority of women voters because of the candidates' positions on issues important to women, such as pay equity, health care and domestic violence.

Specifically, Herr pointed to Obama's support of the proposed Fair Pay Restoration Act, a bill he co-sponsored that would have reversed the Supreme Court's narrowing of the right to challenge an employer over pay discrimination. The Senate failed to approve the bill in April, and while McCain was absent from the vote he later said he would have voted no.

"There's a clear-cut distinguishment on Obama's position and McCain's position," Herr said. "It's not like they kind of agree on (issues important to women). They don't."

Herr said women should vote based on issues and not gender. That would favor Obama, she said, because Palin stakes out positions at the far right of her party.

"Perhaps if McCain had chosen a more moderate woman, it might have been more of a difficult choice" for women voters, Herr said. "There's just no way (women I know) could vote for McCain just because Palin's a woman, because the issues she takes are opposite to their point of view."

E-mail: dpidgeon@lnpnews.com