CBS Poll: Gender Matters More than Race:
Voters are slightly more likely to say that a woman candidate faces more obstacles than a black candidate when it comes to presidential politics even as they see racism as a more serious problem for the nation overall, according to a new CBS News poll. Thirty nine percent of registered voters said a woman running for president faces more obstacles while 33 percent said a black candidate does.When it comes to the 2008 presidential election, voters say Hillary Clinton has been judged more harshly because of her gender than Barack Obama has because of his race. Forty two percent said Clinton has been judged “more harshly” and six percent said she has been judged less harshly because of her gender. Twenty seven percent said they think Obama has been judged “more harshly” because of his race while 11 percent said he has been judged less harshly.
snip
More voters admit their unwillingness to vote for a woman. Nearly one in five voters says that all things being equal, they would rather vote for a man. Fewer than half say that most people they know would vote for a woman for president, although this response may now be intertwined with whether or not people think their acquaintances would vote for Hillary Clinton. Still, 59 percent say America is ready for a woman president.
UPDATE: I should add Paul’s great stats on the role of misogyny: Part I, Part II.
As usual the corporate media is just slightly behind the curve, but the fact they even covered it is rather surprising—and on their front page, no less (at CBS anyways; no other major network even mentions it).
Whether it gets any traction seems doubtful. After all, what is more important: discussing the role misogynistic bigotry plays in our society or sensationalizing the fact Sen. Clinton was in the WH on the “stained blue dress day?”
Front page
Jeez...
Its not like I haven’t been spending hours on end, crunching the numbers from the SUSA poll to show how this is working in real life! ;-)
The media narrative and gender
Paul, I added your great stats.
Since the overwhelming majority of Americans believed there was negligible policy difference—if at all—between Obama and Clinton on every major issue, gender was all the more pivotal. Sure, people will highlight “personality” traits (charm vs. school marm), but when one candidate was clearly qualified and the other was not, gender become the highly likely determining factor (since race was not as influential).
The only way I can see gender being discussed by the corporate media (or the big “liberal” blogs) is by a sole focus—and contempt—for women voters. Paul’s stats showed the cold reality that it is men who have the big problem with gender—not women. If the media does bother with focusing primarily on men, it’ll end up being somehow “understandable” or trivialized as “harmless fun” (think: between cooking segments on the Today show).
Blue Dress Day
What a surprise, more than 17,000 pages of documents about what Hillary did as First Lady and the first thing so many look for is related to Monica Lewinsky. Same as it ever was with the Village, I see.
Although this could help Hillary if some of the more right-wing media repeat their recent Spitzer performance and try to blame Bill’s failings on his wife. Echidne recently noted that such coverage had led to many young women having their “click” moment - the moment where you realize real life is not lived on a college campus and women still have to fight for equality and against a misogynistic culture.
Gender
How many female senators are there? Female Governors? I think race is a higher hurdle to clear.
DCblogger
How many women are there in America as compared to African-Americans?
I'm no Paul Lukasiak, but...
Some quick research and math suggests that the ratio of women to blacks in America is roughly 4:1.
As of last week, it appears that ratio is in practice...
… thanks to the sudden doubling in the number of black governors in office.
the whole race seems to be about white men & who they
will or won’t vote for—which is every race in reality, no? Just not explicitly spoken like nowadays.
Hillary will raise female turnout, and women are the majority of voters.
McCain depresses religious right turnout for the GOP and boosts white guys, and i don’t know if Clinton hate/sexism trumps racism for the GOP base.
have they polled on patriotism?
does anyone know?
on gender & personality--
i find it really interesting the most passive candidate is not at all the woman—and that Hillary as active gets reinforced daily even when it’s insulting (scheming/calculating/smearer instead of smeared, doing things, responsible for attacks, injecting things, willing to DO anything to win, etc). Obama is not presented as active or forceful—except in his use of words alone. Wright further reinforces that passivity bec no action was taken for 20 yrs, and he didn’t act even now that Wright’s poison.
Hey, don't get ahead of me!
McCain depresses religious right turnout for the GOP and boosts white guys, and i don’t know if Clinton hate/sexism trumps racism for the GOP base
That’s my next study! ;-)
well, I can’t say specifically for the GOP base, but SUSA poll shows much greater volativity when it comes to men voting for a woman than it does when it comes to whites voting for blacks.