The XX Factor: What women really think.

Becoming Pro-Life

I’ve been mulling the responses I got, via email and comments, to my question about why a recent Gallup poll might show a seven point jump in the percentage of people who define themselves as prolife (from 44 percent last year to 51 percent this year). Several theories from readers:

The Election.

I think this past year forced me to think about how I really felt. The election has something to do with it . . . Obama’s mother also set me on a course of reflection. As an intelligent, curious single mom who struggled to give her son the best, I could relate.

I really want to be liberal, but in my life the most tangible support as a poor, single mother came from people who looked, acted, and talked just like Sarah Palin. Other high-status women didn’t give me chances; they were the first to complain when I needed time off for a sick child. Academics can write about women’s issues but the evangelicals made sure I could afford to go to work. In contrast, my university still doesn’t offer onsite child-care.

The Aging Population.

Perhaps when folks pass the age at which their daughters may be faced with this decision they can more easily be moved...

(To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)

More in the Annals of Joe Biden Statements

So, news outlets reported that yesterday Joe Biden told fundraisers in Seattle that in the next six months an international crisis would "test" Barack Obama just as one had tested Kennedy. According to reports, Biden told supporters: "The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States. Watch, we're going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy." The gist in part seems to be that Obama is as brilliant as Kennedy. But one wonders why, exactly, Biden felt he had to say this now, since it opened Obama up to an easy counterattack, which McCain promptly seized. At a rally this afternoon, he asked crowds why they'd want to elect a president whose mettle the world feels primed to test--i.e., a president who has so little experience he seems an easy target, or at least an urgent target.

Meanwhile, according to CNN, McCain has been closing ground in one poll, which asked voters who they supported for president, leaving Obama with a five-point lead compared to the eight-point one he had at the beginning of the month. These polls are changing all the time. But maybe not a good time for Biden to be acting as if Obama has the race locked up.

More on the Conservative Shake-Up

I'm not at all convinced that Obama's lead is safe, and I think that the positive poll numbers of late could result in liberal complacency on Election Day. But what's indisputable is that Obama's apparent advantage, and the Palin pick, are creating fissures in the Republican Party. Whether these fissures lead to a healthy shake-up, or a crack-up, has yet to be seen. Jed Lewison has a list of the "Republicans and conservatives jumping ship, pointing fingers, or otherwise abandoning the McCain campaign." It includes some of the names we've brought up recently, including Heather Mac Donald, Christopher Buckley, and David Frum, plus some others we hadn't noted.

Polls and Palin

A guest post from Slate's and The Big Money's Jim Ledbetter:

The Sarah Palin narrative is incomplete and will likely remain so even after her speech tonight. Nonetheless, I perceive a nagging gap between the way the media is so far discussing her candidacy and the way that polls indicate it is being received. Palin IS interesting to women and even appealing; as "XX Factor" noted yesterday, women are discussing her and her family and her situation with great vigor and energy. The media is making legitimate efforts to capture those conversations, dissect, and analyze them. But there is next to no evidence that this interest translates into increased female support for the GOP ticket. Quite the opposite, per Rasmussen Reports:

If McCain's strategy was to reach out to women voters, however, thus far it hasn't been successful. The night after the announcement, slightly more women voters viewed Palin as the right choice for McCain's running mate, but now 41% say she was not, versus 36% who still believe she was a good choice. Forty-one percent (41%) of women say they are less likely now to vote for McCain because of Palin, as opposed to 31% who say they are more likely to support him. Women voters were essentially even on this question in the earlier survey.

 

Men still back McCain's decision. Forty-one percent (41%) say she was the right choice, while 37% disagree. Earlier, men favored the decision by a 43% to 31% margin. Forty-three percent (43%) of men voters say they are more likely to vote for McCain because of his choosing of Palin as a running mate, but 34% say they are less likely to do so. This is a jump in support from the earlier survey. But even a plurality of men (47%) say Palin is not ready to be president in the event of the 72-year-old McCain being incapacitated while in the White House, although 32% believe she is ready. Women voters by a nearly two-to-one margin believe Palin is not ready.

Now, ok, a sizable portion of both men and women are unsure, and all these numbers are subject to change. Still, I find it staggering that two out of three women say Palin is unqualified to be president, and that more women say the choice of Palin makes them LESS likely to vote for McCain, while more men say it makes them MORE likely. Three conclusions from this: 1) As Ann Hulbert and others have argued, the Palin choice may well have been aimed at conservative men, who find that she shores up the ticket's "values" credential. 2) There is a big difference between women talking about Palin—even admiring her—and women's desire to vote Republican. 3) The media in general has yet to figure out how to frame stories involving a nationwide female candidate whose chief political appeal seems to be to men.

Send Them to Irkutsk

No, not the politicians' spouses who can't keep away from prostitutes .... Before it gets forgotten in a flood of Big Beaver jokes, I wanted to pick up on what Juliet wrote:

I saw that BBC poll about world-perceptions-of-America too, and reckoned it was interesting only because it reinforces something I know from observation and anecdote: That this year's U.S. election campaign has had a stunning, transformative, whatever-adjective-you-want impact on foreign perceptions of the United States. Partly this is because the process has been so genuinely surprising, unlike, say, the Russian process—or indeed the British process—in which the leader annoints his successor. Also, I've recently become aware that most of the world thinks segregation still exists in the United States—this despite Powell, Condi, four decades of post-civil-rights-movement politics etc. Whether he wins or not, Obama's candidacy has done more to change that view than any amount of public diplomacy money ever could.

As for the world liking Germany and Japan more than us, or hating us more than Russia, I wouldn't worry about it: Most people in most countries simply know a lot more—a LOT more—about the U.S. and U.S. politics than they do about, say, Russia and Russian politics, so they have strong opinions. Maybe we should sponsor more tourism there (Siberia in January?) as an antidote. And we could send Debbie Stabenow's husband too.

The World Hates America a Little Less

When I saw the headline "America's Global Image Stops Sinking in a Poll" on the New York Times Lede blog, I clicked on it eagerly, expecting (because I'm gullible) some moderate to good news. Sadly, the poll—a worldwide survey conducted by the BBC and GlobeScan—isn't very comforting.

On the plus side, America's reputation abroad has actually improved over the past year in 11 of 23 countries and worsened in just three. But 47 percent of responders still think the U.S. has a negative influence in the world, and just 35 percent think the U.S. has a positive influence.

Also, the world hates America more than it hates Russia, which is pretty amazing. We've only managed to stay ahead of four countries in favorability ratings—North Korea, Pakistan, Iran, and Israel, which isn't much to brag about.

The Axis powers, meanwhile, are doing great: Germany and Japan are at the top of the "mainly positive influence" list. So stop yourself before trying the old "you'd be speaking German if it weren't for us" line on your anti-American friends in Europe.

Change Is Good. Polls Are Caca.

1) Change is good: The single most unambiguous piece of information to come out of last night is that Democrats see the promise of change as way more important than the value of experience—52 percent to 23 percent said it was the No. 1 thing they were looking for in a candidate. And since in '08 shorthand Obama equals change and Clinton equals experience, this can only be good news for him; the candidate who wins the argument about what the election is over generally wins the election. (Only "generally'' may no longer apply, which leads us to our second lesson.)

2) Polls are caca, and all the rules have been suspended. Even more than has been generally acknowledged, this race is so fluid and voters so volatile that pollsters can't seem to keep up, and known patterns seem not to apply. The good in this is that it challenges some of our laziest assumptions and silliest stereotypes like ...

3) Conservatives are sheep who go bah, bah, bah all the way home. Not true, and I don't think it's so much that conservative talk radio has lost its influence as that it never had the authority to issue edicts in the first place; when Rush and Laura and Sean reflect conservative opinion, they do magnify it, but when they don't, voters seem to have no trouble dissenting.

4) Women across the ideological spectrum look great in red. Nah, scratch that one; Cindy McCain and Michelle Obama look good in anything. And on that positive note, one day down, 39 to go.

The More Electable Candidate

When you factor in that Clinton's a known quantity (everyone knows her weaknesses), whereas Obama's relatively untested when it comes to mudslinging, I think this poll may actually suggest that Clinton's more electable, after all.

Another interesting thing about the poll is how differently voters from each party see the electability issue. Here's how it breaks down:

Independents

Obama: 48 percent
Clinton: 28 percent

Republicans

Obama: 43 percent
Clinton: 18 percent

Democrats

Obama: 37 percent
Clinton: 49 percent

Overselling Reason

With all this confusing chatter about Iowa polling numbers (seems like every poll says something different, except when you account for the margin of error, in which case they all say the same thing: "Who knows!"), I think it's worth pointing out that many voters don't vote with their heads or their hearts, but on impulse. We've all heard the "I voted for him because I'd have a beer with him argument," and here's some more food for thought: according to a study published in Science magazine "inferences of competence based solely on facial appearance predicted the outcome of U.S. congressional elections better than chance (e.g. 68.8% of the Senate races in 2004)." The subjects had no previous knowledge of the candidates, and based their predictions solely on a 1-second exposure to a photograph. I don't think the study proves that people don't give a damn about the issues, but it certainly suggests that unreflective, knee-jerk reactions influence political races more than we'd like.