Jackson Free Press

The current Republican Party is quickly losing group with us Belles; it's really too frickin' bad that the state Democratic Party is always the last one to know. Where's Pickering's opponent?

MACON, Ga. -- President Bush's once-solid relationship with Southern women is on the rocks. "I think history will show him to be the worst president since Ulysses S. Grant," said Barbara Knight, a self-described Republican since birth and the mother of three. "He's been an embarrassment." [...]

In recent years, Southern women have been some of Bush's biggest fans, defying the traditional gender gap in which women have preferred Democrats to Republicans. Bush secured a second term due in large part to support from 54 percent of Southern female voters while women nationally favored Democrat John Kerry, 51-48 percent.

"In 2004, you saw an utter collapse of the gender gap in the South," said Karen Kaufmann, a professor of government at the University of Maryland who has studied women's voting patterns. White Southern women liked Bush because "he spoke their religion and he spoke their values."

Now, anger over the Iraq war and frustration with the country's direction have taken a toll on the president's popularity and stirred dissatisfaction with the Republican-held Congress.

Republicans on the ballot this November have reason to worry. A recent Associated Press-Ipsos poll found that three out of five Southern women surveyed said they planned to vote for a Democrat in the midterm elections. With control of the Senate and House in the balance, such a seismic shift could have dire consequences for the GOP.

Democrats need to gain 15 seats in the House and six in the Senate to seize control.

Previous Commentsshow

Interesting blog posting on this topic over on Facing South: t's important to note that the AP piece makes the classic mistake of equating "Southern women" with "white women." Last year, Texas became the country's fourth "majority minority" state, and over 40% of the populations of Georgia and Mississippi aren't white. Women of color, who will soon be half the population of these states, have never been strong supporters of Bush or the Republican Party. That being said, the AP rightly observes that a defection of white Southern women from the GOP could be a key factor -- maybe the leading factor -- in determining the outcome of the mid-term elections, and that foreign policy is a leading cause of their disappointment ... [...] In other words, the South is the only region where the white gender gap was temporarily "tabled" in the 2004 elections. But recent trends show it never goes away.

DonnaLadd

2006-09-08T20:55:25-06:00

ID

107528

Comment

The link doesn't work - got a good one? I'd like to read the whole piece. I tried googling it, but didn't find it.

Author

C.W.

Date

2006-09-25T12:25:03-06:00