Poll Says America Is Ready for Woman President

Poll Says America Is Ready for Woman President

"The Poll, conducted 2/10-17, found that 81 percent of the respondents would vote for a woman for President..."

Interesting and good. But at the risk of sounding like the president of Harvard I'm going to look closer.

This means that a hypothetical female candidate has to make it to roughly 50 percent of the vote (give or take, see 2000 election for details) out of only 81 percent of the electorate. Put another way, she has to win 62 percent of what's left after you take out the 19 percent who would NOT vote for a woman.

And who are these 19 percent? The full release shows only a two point gender gap but not much more detail.

I'm suspicious of this poll since it's looking only at a hypothetical situation. There's probably an age factor - past polls have shown older voters, including older women, are less likely to vote for women. This is fading over time, as the youngest suffragette is past 105 today and even Rosie the Riveter is at least 80. I also suspect that as the marginally more feminist party more Democrats would support Hypothetical Woman than Republicans.

But my gut tells me that a lot of this result is caught up in the identity of the most prominent female potential candidate, Hillary Rodham Clinton. And if that 19 percent is disproportionately Republican, then it doesn't really matter since she wouldn't get those votes anyway. It would matter, however, to Condoleezza Rice.

Despite the decline of parties over the last half century, party ID is still the single biggest predictor of voting behavior. Are there really a lot of Democrats who would vote for, say, Bill Frist over Hillary Rodham Clinton simply because of gender? Would many Republicans support John Kerry rather than Condoleezza Rice?

When the day comes that a major party nominates a woman, the important question will not be "would you vote for A woman?" but "will you vote for THIS woman?"

There will inevitably be the lie to the pollster effect, as has been seen in polls involving groundbreaking black candidates, racists like David Duke, and on ERA referenda. We've been taught that the "correct" answer to this poll's question is Yes, but voting behavior is ultimately private. Will men, in the secrecy of the booth, take silent frustrated revenge on feminism? Will that be counter-balanced by women crossing lines of party and ideology and saying "it's time"? Are there red states that might turn blue or vice versa at the notion of Madam President? Without knowing who makes up the 19 percent who say they wouldn't vote for a woman, and where they are concentrated, we can't measure these potential effects.

The reality is that despite lots of polling and lots of elections for lots of other offices, the presidency is unique and this concept can't really be tested until it happens.

UPDATE: Pandagon adds: "What worries me about the whole issue, though, are (the) questions. It's incredibly reductive and counterproductive to continue asking whether or not females outright would be better on domestic issues than men would - they are bound by the same party ideologies that male candidates are, and aren't going to get through the process of a party primary without hewing to some ideological guidelines...."

Politics