SC Primary: Women Could Decide Race Due to Big Gender Gap
This isn’t really news, Pew showed Newt’s weakness with women back in December. But The State is out with this article today, in pertinent part:
Who will win? It could depend on who votes — men or women — and where they live — the Upstate or coast.
“It may be very close,” Matt Moore, executive director of the S.C. Republican Party, said Friday.
Polling shows Gingrich and Romney running neck and neck. But it also shows a gender divide between the two front-runners, sources in the Romney campaign said Friday. Women voters are breaking for Romney and men for Gingrich, they said.
Frankly, I’ve been wondering when the heck someone was going to write about this so I’m glad to see it noted.
Now remember – the gender gap can exist and often is used to refer to the gap between how men and women vote for a single candidate (men really like Gingrich but women don’t). But the gap between how women vote for Romney and not for Gingrich also affects the outcome.
Read the full post at Writes Like She Talks.
8 Responses to “SC Primary: Women Could Decide Race Due to Big Gender Gap”
“Who will win? It could depend on who votes — men or women — and where they live — the Upstate or coast.”
I have fond vacation memories of the Harbor Island area, but am not familiar enough with the rest of South Carolina to know why voting trends would be different based on “Upstate or coast”. Any thoughts on this?
I have to confess ignorance on that too, Zephyr. Anyone else?
And I don’t note this in the post, but former SC first lady, Jenny Sanford (disclosure: she was a classmate of mine but just a distant acquaintance in undergrad at G’town) very specifically did not favor Newt Gingrich though she would not say who she may vote for. However, she did note that she very visibly supported Nikki Haley for SC gov and Haley in turn supports very publicly Mitt Romney. I think Sanford is still an influential figure in SC politics so it will be interesting to see if that has any effect.
The coastal plain is part of the Black Belt while the uplands are more mixed racially and politically, tending toward NASCAR country and then becoming whiter still as you get into Appalachia.
South Carolina has long had a history of division between the “tidewater” (coastal plain) people and those inland, division reaching the point of friction at times. Don’t you remember your basic US history?
AW – Jack – basic US history did not include detail like that about SC – but then I learned my basic US history in Connecticut in the 1960s and 70s.
Side note… I have a friend in Charleston.. British born, super strong accent. Belongs to some crazy confederate group that likes to re-enact the war. Needless to say…extremely conservative. He has an apartment complex full of college kids…needless to say…extremely liberal.
Ahh… Charleston, what a mix of people.
BJ is pretty correct, with the occasional crazy brit in the mix.
the most unpredictable vote…
SC women!
I can’t believe they went with Newt.
Totally with you Shannon – about to post my wrap-up which goes over that women’s vote piece!