In the battle to capture the votes of women, Oprah Winfrey will stump for Barack Obama in Iowa and New Hampshire. Already the 2008 election has provoked the most serious battle for the votes of women since Geraldine Ferraro ran for the vice presidency in 1984. In most U.S. elections, women and the issues that most impact their lives are ignored.
It's amazing the difference a woman in the race can make.
After Obama disclosed the news about Oprah, Ralph Hoagland, a member of Obama’s Northeast Steering Group, said:
"I think that Oprah can say to women 'you do not have to vote for the first woman president. Vote for what you need.'"
Of course, some women feel that they need a woman president.
To date, Oprah's support for Obama has not swayed African-American women. It will be interesting to see if she can change that by campaigning for Obama in Iowa and New Hampshire.
In the race to capture the votes of black women, Hillary Clinton continues to be way out front. The Washington Post reports: "In a head-to-head competition between Clinton and Obama, black men are evenly divided (44 percent for Obama, 44 percent for Clinton), while black women support Clinton (52 percent to 35 percent)."*
It's also true that polls find African-American women to be more supportive of feminist values than white women, and this has been true for pretty well forever. (Of course, there is disagreement among feminists on the question of whether a vote for Hillary as the first woman president is representative of feminist values.)
But the gender gap does not prevail in all questions. Among African-American women and men, "more than 6 in 10 in each group" say that Hillary Clinton is "the Democrat with the best chance of getting elected president."
*[Determined by the combination of the 2 most recent Washington Post-ABC News polls as of 11/13/07.]
Barack Obama Hillary Clinton Oprah Iowa New Hampshire News Gender Gap Democratic Black Women Feminist Politics Gender