An Associated Press-GfK poll published this week indicates that women are shifting to favor the Republican party. “Women have moved in the GOP’s direction since September,” the AP reported.
Just a month ago, 47 percent of female likely voters favored a Democratic-controlled Congress, the AP reported. “In the new poll, the two parties are about even among women; 44 percent prefer the Republicans, 42 percent the Democrats.”
Is this a sign that Democratic candidates are failing to address what women need and care about?
In "Women Voters: The Base of the New Populism," the latest memorandum published through the Campaign for America's Future's Populist Majority project, we aggregate the polling that shows what women want to hear from congressional candidates this election cycle. Contrary to what pundits might infer from polls such as the latest from the AP, the memo says that a majority of women have "strong populist views" and "look to government to create opportunity in the economy through progressive reforms and regulations."
But if the AP poll is any indication, not enough women are hearing that message from Democratic candidates.
The poll revealed that the economy remains the top priority in this election cycle, with 91 percent calling the economy “extremely” or “very” important. The GOP, according to this poll, has increased its advantage as the party more trusted to handle the issue, with 39 percent siding with Republicans and 31 percent Democrats.
Meanwhile, The Washington Examiner, a conservative weekly, published a cover story by Mona Charen on “what women voters want” and how Republican candidates can win them. She argues that the Democratic party has erred by basing its appeal to women on demonizing Republican candidates’ view on reproductive rights–particularly abortion and birth control. A “single-minded focus on the gynecological,” she calls it – with a heavy dose of caricature. “Democrats lie about their opponents’ view on abortion because only by presenting Republicans as extremists can the issue work for them,” she writes.
Charen, however, misses the mark. Democrats in the past have harnessed the support of women – particularly unmarried women – not only because of the Democrat’s social agenda but because of its progressive economic agenda. Reproductive issues are only a small fraction of the Democratic campaign. The “women’s economic agenda” released last year by House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, which includes such items as the Equal Pay Act and child-care support for working mothers, are key reforms in this overall agenda.
Yet, the AP poll should serve as a warning to Democrats that women – especially unmarried women – are about so much more than reproductive issues.
That warning was echoed this week by R. Donahue Peebles, a real estate developer and vice-chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation who has also been a major fundraiser for President Obama. "I can't count the number of times my wife has gotten direct mail pieces from candidates this election cycle about a woman's right to choose," he said in an interview on Bloomberg Television. "... Why don't we ask the question about why aren't there more women as CEOs? How do we promote more entrepreneurship among women? How do we respect women as heads of households? ... The Democrats should be speaking to that issue and owning that issue and they're not."
The Populist Majority memorandum on women and the economy shows how candidates can take ownership of a progressive agenda that addresses women's real-life needs. Contrary to Charen’s outrageous statement in the Examiner that single women are to a point looking “to the government to be a husband,” women simply want government to end the rigging of the economy that causes them to face greater economic hardship and societal burdens than men.
Isaiah J. Poole contributed to this post.
