Lifetime Survey: Women Largely Support Obama

I love this woman

Survey says: neither Obama or McCain have the majority of women voters: 

According to the survey, neither presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama nor Republican presidential nominee John McCain has secured a clear majority of women, who have decided every presidential election since 1968. Obama garnered 49% to McCain's 38%, and 6% of these women said they were only leaning toward a candidate. With 90 days to go until Election Day, 10% of women are firmly undecided, indicating either candidate has a shot at becoming the next president.

Of Hillary's supporters, most have flocked to Obama:

While the majority of women who voted for Hillary in the primary are flocking to Obama (76%), nearly one out of five (18%) says they will vote for McCain for president.

And most of the surveyed said Hillary lost because of the kind of campaign she ran, but most women think she paved the way for a woman to run for president:

Despite all the talk about sexism in the presidential campaign, the majority of women voters laid the blame for Hillary's loss squarely on her and her strategists' shoulders; they largely reject gender as a cause of her demise. Thirty-four percent believe she lost "because of the kind of campaign she ran"; 31% said because of "who she is and what she stands for"; and 21% said "because she is a woman."

Obama is doing well among minority women:

While Obama is doing well with minority women, with support from 89% of African-Americans and 62% of Hispanics, McCain garnered support from nearly half of Caucasian women surveyed (47% vs. 38% for Obama). Hispanic women (14%) were more undecided than African-Americans (4%) or Caucasians (11%).

On the vice presidential choice, most women say gender doesn't matter:

The majority of women voters polled say gender does not matter. Obama's selection of a woman running mate makes no difference to 55% of women voters, and McCain's selection of a woman as his #2 makes no difference to 62%.
• However, Obama would benefit twice as much as McCain from offering the second slot to a woman (29% more likely to support Obama if he picks a woman vs. 15% who would be more likely to support McCain). Selecting a woman #2 would result in a net negative for McCain. While 15% said they would be more likely to support McCain if he picked a woman, 20% said they would be less likely to pick him if a woman were on his ticket.
• Forty-seven percent of Hillary Clinton's primary voters said they'd be more likely to vote for Obama if he chose a woman running mate, and 4% said less likely. This is the exact breakdown of current Obama supporters overall. However, Hillary's primary supporters were largely unmoved by a woman on McCain's ticket (59%).

Most women have a positive view of Obama:

More than half the female electorate (53%) hold mostly positive views of Obama, while 28% have mostly negative views and 14% hold neutral or mixed views.
• Women like Obama largely because of his personal attributes (35%), such as his intelligence, youth, speaking ability, honesty and energy. Women also like the change and new ideas he represents to them (19%) and his general stance on issues (19%).
• Those with negative impressions of the candidate said he lacks the experience and qualifications to be president (27%), disliked his position on specific issues (19%) such as abortion, health care and national security, as well as his positions on issues more generally (18%), and his campaign style and changing positions on the issues (16%).

McCain's key could be with women ages 50-64, who are up in the air, according to the survey. Frankly, I think McCain's chances of becoming the president are slim and will be slimmer after the debates. But maybe not. Maybe I'm just all full of that hope stuff.

Anyway, look for McCain to start talking about how much he loves women folk.

The Swamp: "It makes the Republican strategy pretty clear," says Democratic consultant Celinda Lake, who helped conduct the poll for Lifetime television. "If you get the women who are 50 to 64 to join the women who are over 65, you've got a strategy for beating Obama."

Older white women are worried about Obama's age (he's 47), which feeds into their doubts about his qualifications and inexperience at the national level, Lake says. Older women voters do want change, but they also believe there is both good change and bad change.

"Some of it is race," she adds. But older white women "are nervous about Obama not just because he's African-American, but because he's new in so many ways."

Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway, who collaborated on the Lifetime survey, says McCain can gain strategically if he's able to extend his lead among older whites. It would free him to spend less time defending a Republican-leaning state, like Florida, and put more into pinning Obama down in senior-rich Pennsylvania, which the Democrat would like to put away early.

It just kills me whenever I see that race is factor. 
And who'd think that people still don't know Obama was raised by a single mom:

Obama can't help it that his mother died of cancer in 1995. But he has used her image in campaign commercials to make the point that he was raised by a (white) single parent.

That life story is still unfamiliar to many voters, including seniors he needs to reach.