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Oct
10
Newsweek has a new poll out and if it’s to be believed, it puts to rest any concerns that so-called PUMAs and members of other Hillary Clinton-centered groups enveloped disproportionately large numbers of women who would never vote for Barack Obama:
Supporters of Hillary Clinton, as many as a fifth of whom had at one point told pollsters they’d support McCain over Obama, now back the Democratic nominee 88 percent to 7 percent.
At one point, Columbus, Ohio was the epicenter of a movement of called Clinton Supporters Count Too. And yet, since June, some others have claimed that such women – those who would not vote for Obama – didn’t actually exist, but were either Republicans trying to convince former Clinton supporters that it was okay to vote for John McCain or simply all Republicans, trying to change the tone, message and “truth” by repeating it (that McCain is better for women and on women’s issues).
Here in Ohio, I’ve heard from members of all of those groups (and had several posts overrun by some of them) – the women who voted for Clinton just because she was a woman, the women like the late Stephanie Tubbs Jones, my congresswoman, who supported Obama as soon as Clinton conceded and the women who went for Clinton, then went for McCain and then, when he chose Sarah Palin, sighed with grief for one reason or another but ultimately feel they can no longer support McCain but are not comfortable with Obama either.
But I never really believed that the number of women who supported Hillary Clinton who would not vote for Barack Obama would be significant enough to help John McCain or hurt Barack Obama. The polls over the last month have been trending toward that thesis.
Please do read the Newsweek article and poll info at the end of the piece and no, I wasn’t asked to or fed this info from anyone, including Newsweek. I saw it in a tweet.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 9:47 pm October 10th, 2008 in Barack Obama, Democrats, Gender, John McCain, Ohio, Politics, Sarah Palin, Voting, WH2008, Women
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8 Responses to “Nearly 9 out of 10 Clinton supporters now support Obama”
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I’m sorry but that’s just not accurate. Unless Toledo is some strange microcosm, none of the Clinton supporters I know who did not initially switch over to Obama during the convention have changed their minds. They only polled 1,212 people, 1035 of them were registered voters. To assume that somehow 100 Clinton supporters stating that 9 out of 10 now supports Obama means that is a national trend is a huge stretch of the imagination to make that as a claim by Newsweek.
The only movement I’ve seen is a few who stated McCain are now saying McKinney. Heck there are more PUMA’s online than in that survey and it certainly doesn’t seem as if huge numbers of them are changing their minds.
I realize the push to pretend that they don’t exist still seems to exist, but they do…
Hmm – well – I don’t know what to say. I trust you – I’m sure you are right in what you’re observing. But what Newsweek’s poll indicates, based on the methodology, does not seem farfetched to me either. Maybe it’s a matter of scale or lopsidedness in location? Or…someone’s not being upfront? Maybe that’s where the Bradley effect rests? That’s a distinct possibility.
Maybe there will be more numbers out on this, I hope, although I haven’t visited this specific issue in a while other than the generic who are women supporting kind of thing.
I just did a quick visit to the usual Puma haunts, and there does not appear to be any huge migration to Obama that I might have missed.
It’s rather ironic how everyone wants to believe that these women and some men too, will magically at the last minute forget the months they’ve fought against what is happening that they disagree with and have been repeatedly harassed over and vote for Obama. It’s almost comical. Will the numbers be enough to “hurt Obama or help McCain” only matters if the election is close, which some still believe it will be.
Some of them are lying when they are asked in public, but not all are…Here’s one example:
Shelly Mandell, president of the Los Angeles Chapter of the National Organization for Women and a self-described lifelong Democrat, introduced Palin at the event.
In rarity for a Republican event, Mandell bragged about her efforts campaigning for the failed Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s and her support for Geraldine Ferraro, the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 1984.
“I know Sarah Palin cares about women’s rights,” Mandell said. “As vice president, she will fight for you. She cares about our children and she cares about women’s lives.”
Of course she’s being attacked for stating that, because that’s what happens, but to pretend there are not women out there just like her? There’s more than one out of ten, if I had to guess it would be closer to 30% but we’ll find out on November 4th.
If it was McCain/Lieberman, that would be entirely different as a Hillary supporter. It’s not. Now that Sarah Palin is in the mix she takes care of the women who have always depised Hilary and Bill Clinton and they do exist. It is kind of amusing to watch this lure of the Hilary supporters that would go immediately to MCcain which is a crock. If they want to be that influenced, fine. Most of the Hilary haters, I know, are tickled to death by Palin and were just paying lip service to the Hilary factor. If they dislike Hilary, they really hate Obama.
Sorry Pam, but that’s not what I’m seeing or have experienced, the women I know that supported Hillary, most of which did not support Edwards first like I did, that have not supported Obama have done so for a variety of reasons. Some of the very reasons why they supported Hillary in the first place, which was not related to their platforms. I think most people agree those were not very different. It’d be incorrect to say this is totally gender driven as a reason for all of them. It’s been pointed out over and over again the variety of reasons but then again most of the media and blog focus seems to be on trying to say they just don’t exist.
If these women despised Hillary, they would have never been avid Hillary supporters to begin with. Many of them were very disappointed in Biden as the selection, they were holding out hope that Hillary would be selected because that would have sent the message that they were wrong about their feeling that the Democratic Party and Obama did not care about them.
As a ps….a Man much wiser than me on this issue:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFMbj6sd-S4
@Jill:
– and you too, Lisa – you’re both right. In the methodology notes, it mentions the margin of error for Clinton supporters is +/- 8 percent. That makes the difference between the “fifth of whom had at one point told pollsters they’d support McCain over Obama” and the seven percent who report that sentiment in the more recent poll reports not a “significant difference,” in the language of statistics.
I also would add that there are probably significant differences regionally in this phenomenon which would require an additional level of stratification to measure properly, and that additional level of sophistication is missing from this sample (or at least not mentioned in the methodology notes).
Is it likely that there will be some movement in that particular demographic segment before Election Day? I would say yes, although I wouldn’t bet the house on it. I can’t understand how people who say they were attracted to Clinton’s candidacy because of her strong advocacy on issues that McCain’s positions are diametric opposites can logically support his bid for the Presidency – but as we know, politics is not strictly a rational process.
Why a sane democrat would vote for McCain and Palin is beyond belief!
I am a registered democrat, but I have, on occasion voted republican when I thought the choice was clearly superior. However, democratic women, women who believed in Hillary for any other reason than that she is a woman, could not with any sanity vote for the republican ticket this time around. It stands for nothing Hillary stood for. And if the only reason you voted for Hillary was that she is a woman, well, to say the least, you, in Hillary’s case get a reasonable pass because she is more plausible than any of the republican candidates and would have been a decent choice. But at it’s truest worst, and for most other women contenders, Palin as a great example, it’s just down right stupid, and stomps on the efforts of all the women who came before us who fought for us to have the right to compete competently for the job. It also degrades how people see us as women if all we do is do what we have accused men of doing from the beginning of time–thinking with their Y chromosome!
Palin’s incompetent, arrogant and foolhardy! McCain stands for nothing Hillary stood for! And it’s irresponsible to put yourself, your families and the families of this nation in the kind of danger a Palin presidency would.
So if you’re not voting for Obama because he beat your candidate, well ladies, that’s how elections work: one person wins, another loses. And Hillary began the hate mongering we now see continued with McCain and Palin. That’s why you’re so angry and can’t get over it. She’s the one to blame for your attitude. She got personal, she got mad, and guess what? it cost her. And you are her angry “children” and I’m just wondering what good that’s doing you or your country. Had you thought about that?