Support For Dole Lags Among Women

By Jeanne Meserve/CNN

WASHINGTON (Aug. 7) -- Republican presidential candidate Robert Dole doesn't just have a gender gap. It's a gully, a gulch.

"Either Bob Dole makes headway, significant headway, with women voters or he loses the election," says analyst Doug Bailey.

Recent polling shows that among women, President Bill Clinton holds a 58-30 percent lead over Dole, with 9 percent backing Reform Party candidate Ross Perot.

Says Republican pollster Linda Divall, "It is critical that Bob Dole really focus on those groups of women who do have some degree of receptivity to the Republican party, specifically working women."

Dole's economic plan was designed, and pitched, to win the votes of working women, and those of other key constituencies with whom he is in dire trouble.

One group is suburban independents, where he trails the president by 30 points. Another is Catholics, many of whom were so-called Reagan Democrats. Despite Clinton's support for abortion rights, he has a 25-point lead with Catholics.

In recent elections, the youth vote has been a Republican vote, but among 18- to 24-year-olds, Perot has slightly more support in recent polls than Dole.

And even with his own age group, Dole lags. One survey showed Clinton with 56 percent, Dole with 36 percent and Perot with 5 percent.

If Dole does something to win over one of these constituencies, he is almost certain to alienate another. So from here on out he is likely to stress issues and themes that have an appeal to a broad array of voters.

Said Divall: "I think his strategy is very simple: to say that he is the person that this country most trusts to handle the office of the presidency."

But analyst Bailey says Dole has not done that and remains one-dimensional in the public eye.

"There is no visible family," Bailey said. "There is no father role. There is no grandfather role. There is no home. There is no hobby. There is no sports. There is nothing beyond politics that you see to Bob Dole."

The Dole campaign is quick to point out that white men, the backbone of the Republican party, support Dole by a wide margin, but it's not wide enough to fill in the gender and other gaps. At the moment, those gaps look wide enough and deep enough to swallow up the Dole candidacy.

This story originally appeared on CNN's "Inside Politics."

Related Stories:

• Dole Attacks The Gender Gap In Pennsylvania -- July 24, 1996
• Coding Messages To Men, Women -- June 12, 1996

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