Republican Survey: Gender Gap Sank Dole Bid

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich (Reuter) - Younger married women who backed President Clinton in numbers far greater than previous elections would have predicted were the key to Bob Dole's loss, a Republican party survey said Tuesday.

"Married women have voted pretty much like men (in the past), but this time there was a much larger gap between married women and men. That hurt Bob Dole. It hurt us at a lot of levels," Republican National Chairman Haley Barbour told the closing session of the Republican Governors Association annual meeting.

A poll summary released by the party said Dole "fared 14 percentage points worse among female voters than male voters -- 35 percent to 49 percent -- and congressional Republicans fared 18 points worse."

"These margins are larger than in past elections and were primarily driven by a change in the voting behavior of married women," the report said. "In the past women have tended to vote Republican in equal proportion to male voters.

"Republicans lost support among married women in 1996. There was an eight-point deficit between married women and men for Dole ... this erosion was substantially more pronounced among married women under 45," who backed Clinton over Dole by about a 14-point spread, it said.

Party polling expert Wesley Anderson said Dole had a worse gender gap in the Nov. 5 election than voting day exit polls showed, and a lack of support among younger married women was a key to his defeat. He said "values" were the top vote determinant, especially among women for whom the word really means "virtues", such as control and safety.

The poll was conducted for the Republican party from Nov. 6-10 among 1,200 adults who voted Nov. 5. It had an margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.

Clinton defeated Dole by eight points in the general elelction, while the Republicans retained control of the House and Senate, though with a slimmer margin in the former. Republican governors now are in power in a record 32 states covering nearly three-quarters of the U.S. population. Four years ago they held power in only 17 states.

Barbour said the last election showed "a lot of voters who agreed with us didn't vote for us", and suggested the governors will have to play a key role in turning that around in the coming years through political leadership.

"Our party needs your leadership ... the other side is bereft of ideas," said Barbour, who is retiring as party chairman. His replacement will be elected in January.

The survey also found that Clinton's success among Roman Catholic voters was another key to his victory. The poll found Clinton got 52 percent of the Catholic vote compared to 38 for Dole and 10 percent for independent Ross Perot.