Female voters are “supposed” to vote Democratic, but John Kerry’s campaign is failing to keep the pace to convince women supporters. IWF suggests that this struggle is due to women’s concerns over security and dependence on government. And a recent New York Times article pursues the Kerry team’s efforts to reverse this trend.
It was no accident that John Kerry appeared on a daytime television interview show and recalled his days as a young prosecutor representing a rape victim. Or that he then flew from New York to Florida to promote his health care proposals. Or that on Thursday he will preside over an Iowa town hall meeting on national security with an audience made up entirely of women.
These appearances are part of an energetic drive by the Kerry campaign to win back voters that Democrats think are rightfully theirs: women.
In the last few weeks, Kerry campaign officials have been nervously watching polls that show an erosion of support for the Democratic presidential candidate among women, one of the Democratic Party’s most reliable constituencies.
In a New York Times/CBS News Poll conducted last week, women who are registered to vote and said they were likely to vote favored President George W. Bush over Kerry by 48 to 43 percent.
In 2000, 54 percent of women voted for Al Gore, the losing Democratic candidate, while 43 percent voted for Bush, the Republican victor.
Democratic and Republican pollsters both say the reason for the decline in support by women for the Democratic candidate is an issue that Bush had initially pitched as part of an overall message — which candidate would be best able to protect America from terrorists. That issue has become a particularly compelling one to women.
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