Mitt Romney has a big problem in Michigan: women voters are fleeing him in droves:
President Barack Obama has opened up a double-digit lead over GOP challenger Mitt Romney in Michigan fueled by a wave of women moving toward the Democratic president following the national party conventions.
Obama leads Romney by 14.2 points, 52 percent to 37.8 percent, in the Detroit News/WDIV Local 4 poll, a solid improvement from August pre-convention polls in which the president held a six-point advantage, 48 percent to 42 percent. In this month’s poll, 8.7 percent of voters were undecided.
Romney made a concerted pitch to women voters during the national GOP convention in Tampa, Fla., and Obama did the same at the Democratic convention in Charlotte, N.C. Both campaigns feature women prominently as surrogates or supporters at campaign stops. But poll results suggest the Democrats’ convention lineup that focused heavily on women’s health, and the federal auto rescue of General Motors and Chrysler resonated with independent females here. About 29 percent of Michigan women call themselves Republican, but women identifying themselves as Democrats shot up from 43 percent in August to 55 percent this month.“Women … made a drastic move to the Democratic Party,” said pollster Richard Czuba of Glengariff Group, Inc., which conducted the poll.
That shift gives Obama a dominating 20-point advantage over Romney among women compared to an 11-point lead in August. Obama also has improved from a near tie with Romney among men last month to an eight-point advantage this month.
“In 28 years of polling in Michigan, I don’t think I’ve seen a gender gap this large before in Michigan,” Czuba said. “… If women stay this strong for Democrats, there will be problems for Republicans all down the ballot.”The News poll showed the largest lead for Obama in Michigan among recent surveys. Earlier this month, polls showed Obama up by between two and 10 points.
The poll almost seems to say “Take that, Rush Limbaugh.” I suspect if Limbaugh had not gone after Sandra Fluke and so many GOPers timidly addressed the issue, issued careful statements (like Romney) or went on the offensive against her, the GOP’s problem with women voters might not be as big. And, also, Fluke wouldn’t have spoken during the prime time hour at the Democratic convention as a warm-up act for Bill Clinton.
NOTE: The headline was wrong on this post and due to TMVers all being offline it was not fixed until some hours later. We regret the error.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.