TIME magazine just ran a story titled, “Can Obama Win Back Wal-Mart Moms?” based on a new Washington Post-ABC News survey that found McCain went from an 8-point deficit among white women before the Republican National Convention to a 12-point advantage after it, a total gain of 20 percentage points against Obama among this demographic. The article asserts:
The women that pollsters are watching most closely this year are different in some ways from their “soccer mom” and “security mom” sisters of those earlier election cycles. For one thing, they are slightly older than soccer moms (in their 40s and 50s) and are juggling another set of problems — how to pay for college for their kids, and how to take care of their elderly parents. They are also less upscale. Lacking college degrees, they are more likely to be feeling the brunt of an array of economic problems that now includes high energy prices, rising unemployment, soaring health-care costs and housing foreclosures.
FiveThirtyEight.com gets into more specifics about mothers, observing that Palin has an 80 percent favorability rating among white women with children. In fact, says statistician Nate Silver, “it appears to me that Palin’s high favorability ratings among women are entirely owing to her popularity among women with children.”
He then looks at which states have the highest percentage of mothers. Most of the top ones, it turns out, are red states. White women with children, however, Sarah Palin’s demographic, are distributed more evenly through the swing states, making their role in this election very interesting indeed.
Worth a read if you’re into numerical electoral prognostication.
Based on the high overall number of mothers in red states, Silver also says, “Whether motherhood begets conservatism or conservatism begets motherhood, we will leave as an exercise for the reader (my guess is the former).”
Funny, motherhood seems to have made me even more progressive—but I can see where his assertion might hold true for the population overall. What are your thoughts on this? Has your political position shifted left or right since you became a parent? Or are you too busy running in circles after your children to bother with politics?
As a queer mom raising three girls with my partner, my political position hasn’t shifted, but motherhood has increased the host of issues that I care deeply about. I don’t have time to concern myself with “lipstick” or “pigs,” but I damn well want to hear what is going to be done with the economy, healthcare, education, the war, protecting Choice, and LGBT equality.