Wow!
Take a look at this from the New York Times:
If women choose Republicans over Democrats in House races on Tuesday, it will be the first time they have done so since exit polls began tracking the breakdown in 1982. …
In the case of women – a traditionally Democratic-leaning group that the White House has been courting actively in recent weeks – the shift toward the Republicans was marked in the latest poll, especially when compared with their stated preferences in the last Times/CBS poll, in mid-September. …
In the earlier poll, women favored Democrats over Republicans by seven percentage points. In the latest poll, women said they were likely to support a Republican over a Democrat by four percentage points, suggesting Republican gains among women who were undecided as of last month.
That’s 11 points in a month!
Is it possible that the gender gap-first discovered and named in the 1980s-is disappearing?
It may be that this phenomenon is the result merely of a bad economy and a massively unpopular health care bill. But I’d like to think that women voters are realizing that the big government measures women favored in the past-the source of the gender gap-are seen for what they are: any government entitlement program is likely to foster need for yet another entitlement program, not independence. Perhaps the economy, riots in France over raising the retirement age to 62 (!), and a health care bill that is the apotheosis of government intrusion have helped along the distaff epiphany. And perhaps in some small way, it is organization like IWF that have been making the case, lo these many years, not for women to be Republicans or Democrats, but to recognize that the health of the nation-including us-lies in freedom and personal responsibility.