Luck Be the Ladies?

WHEN members of the Republican National Committee meet in Boston later this month, they will be briefed on how to woo women voters. The presentation will include a startling electoral map of last November’s results, showing that if only men had voted for president, George W. Bush would have carried 43 states—including New England and every state west of the Mississippi. Al Gore’s alpha males in Illinois and New York would have accounted for over half of his modest 101 electoral votes.

This male-only map might prompt dark GOP thoughts about the wisdom of the Nineteenth Amendment, but it reveals a deeper problem for Democrats: the abandonment of their party by men. The Republicans have carried the women’s vote in three of the last six presidential elections, winning as much as 56 percent in 1984, but Democrats haven’t won more than 43 percent of the male vote in the past 20 years. Republicans have been made to feel that they have intractable women problems, but they have been able to bridge a gender divide that remains a treacherous gulf for the Democrats.

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Kate O'Beirne

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Presidential Election

Gender

women

Voters

WHEN members of the Republican National Committee meet in Boston later this month, they will be briefed on how to woo women voters. The presentation will include a startling electoral map of last November’s results, showing that if only men had voted for president, George W. Bush would have carried 43 states—including New England and every state west of the Mississippi. Al Gore’s alpha males in Illinois and New York would have accounted for over half of his modest 101 electoral votes.

This male-only map might prompt dark GOP thoughts about the wisdom of the Nineteenth Amendment, but it reveals a deeper problem for Democrats: the abandonment of their party by men. The Republicans have carried the women’s vote in three of the last six presidential elections, winning as much as 56 percent in 1984, but Democrats haven’t won more than 43 percent of the male vote in the past 20 years. Republicans have been made to feel that they have intractable women problems, but they have been able to bridge a gender divide that remains a treacherous gulf for the Democrats.