Obama gains with women: Jobs, social issues help

[NJMaverick]

Quote:WASHINGTON (AP) — It's looking like President Barack Obama may be back in the good graces of women.
His support dropped among this critical constituency just before the new year began and the presidential campaign got under way in earnest. But his standing with female voters is strengthening, polls show, as the economy improves and social issues, including birth control, become a bigger part of the nation's political discourse.
"Republicans are making a big mistake with this contraception talk, and I'm pretty sure that they are giving (the election) to Obama," says Patricia Speyerer, 87, of McComb, Miss., a GOP-leaning independent. "It's a stupid thing."
The recent furor over whether religious employers should be forced to pay for their workers' contraception is certainly a factor but hardly the only reason for women warming up to Obama again after turning away from him late last year.
An Associated Press-GfK poll suggests women also are giving the president more credit than men are for the country's economic turnaround.
Among women, his approval ratings on handling the economy and unemployment have jumped by 10 percentage points since December. Back then, a wide swath of Americans expressed anxiety over the nation's slow climb out of recession and anger at a government that couldn't agree on steps to speed things up.
Since then, the unemployment rate has kept declining, and Obama hasn't been shy about trumpeting it, and analysts say that drop may have resonated particularly with women.

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-gains-women-...33448.html

[jaxx]

The more Santorum and pals screech about social issues, the better the President looks. They made a huge mistake in butting into women's issues.....and women have long memories.

[janedrake]

You know what gets me - the Prez has to keep pulling a rabbit out of a hat in order to keep support among all the various constituencies. That's probably par for the course, but there really wasn't a reason for his support amongst women to be low in the first place - unless we want to talk about the hysteria over requiring minors to obtain a prescription for the morning-after pill - but I really thought that particular furor was highly misguided.

[jaxx]

(02-28-2012 12:08 PM)janedrake Wrote:  You know what gets me - the Prez has to keep pulling a rabbit out of a hat in order to keep support among all the various constituencies. That's probably par for the course, but there really wasn't a reason for his support amongst women to be low in the first place - unless we want to talk about the hysteria over requiring minors to obtain a prescription for the morning-after pill - but I really thought that particular furor was highly misguided.

I totally agree. Women who thought there was a better choice than PBO are now seeing what they would get. The GOP rampage through the states with the draconian laws against women's health issues are just the start of what they would do.