It appears that rejuvenating the image of the Republican party, and making its brand more popular among women is not as easy as it seems. The first polls taken after Palin's choice on Friday show that among Democratic women - including those who, according to mainstream media should have been truly disappointed that Hillary Clinton did not win the Democratic nomination - 9% say Palin makes them more likely to support McCain, 15% LESS likely (Gallup).
According to Rasmussen, women soundly rejected her, 48% to 25% in answering to the question: "Is she ready to be president?
Overall, likely voters expressed a favorable impression of her by a 53/26 margin, but there was a severe gender gap on this: Men embraced her at 58% to 23%, while for women it was 48/30.
The widespread uncertainty about whether Palin is qualified to be president amounts to the lowest vote of confidence in a running mate since the elder George Bush chose then-Indiana senator Dan Quayle to join his ticket in 1988.
Is that surprising? Only for CNN and FOX pundits (as Frank Rich pointed out in his excellent column yesterday). The long trend of American politics are well-established, and one of them is that women tend to vote Democratic because of Republican Party's staunch opposition to abortion. As a large majority of women are pro-choice, it is only natural that they vote for the party who supports their rights in the political arena. Palin is the darling of pro-life women (and men), a constituency that was skeptical of McCain tepid attitude toward their crusade to outlaw abortion. In this respect, it is another move to consolidate the Republican base, not to hunt in the Democratic pastures.
The problem of this strategy is obvious: this year, the number of citizens who identify with the GOP is much smaller than the number of those who consider themselves Democrats. The gap is about 29% to 37%. This means that bringing to the polls all the faithful supporters of the two parties will translate in a large victory for the Democrats, assuming that Independents split 50-50 between McCain and Obama.
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