They say that in politics this is the year of the woman. Perhaps so. Perhaps not being one of the boys can be an advantage. But it is also becoming clear that a political appeal based on one`s sex is no simple matter.
Take Dianne Feinstein`s recent primary victory in California, which has become exhibit A for the case that a new day is dawning for women in American politics.
Being a woman almost surely helped Feinstein win the Democratic nomination for governor-but not because more women than men voted for her. Over all, there was very little of what the experts like to call a gender gap in the voting. But that finding conceals a world of political difference-not between men and women, but among women.
Election experts were baffled by the absence of difference between the support Feinstein won from men and from women.
So one of those experts, Kathleen Frankovic, who is in charge of polling for CBS News, rummaged around in the polling data collected for the networks on election day, when Feinstein won by 51 to 42 percent.
Frankovic found something fascinating: the relatively small differences between the support Feinstein got from men and from women paled in comparison to the differences in the support she got among three groups of women: those who said they had made up their minds early, those who decided in the last two weeks before the June 5 primary and those who decided in the last three days. Among women who made up their minds early, Feinstein won by a landslide. She also won among women who decided in the last two weeks, but not by as much. Among women who decided in the last three days, she lost to John Van de Kamp, California`s attorney general. Variations among men who voted for her were much less pronounced-and in the opposite direction.
While no one has offered a complete explanation, the difference illustrates what Celinda Lake, a Democratic polltaker, describes as ”the very unusual dynamic a woman generates in a race.”
Generally, the women who decided early to support Feinstein wanted to see another woman succeed, or who were drawn to her strong support for legal abortion.
They helped create the momentum around Feinstein`s campaign, a sense that was transmitted by the press to those men who, at the end, said they decided she was the most electable Democrat.
While men were increasingly drawn to Feinstein as her political strength increased, a substantial number of women waited until the end and then could not bring themselves to vote for her.
Lake has observed this pattern among older women in some other elections in which women were strong candidates. Lake has concluded that this is because the presence of a strong female candidate challenges the roles that some of the older women have long accepted for themselves. But more than that seemed to be at work in this race.
Before the candidates had clearly defined themselves, many voters identified Feinstein as the more liberal candidate.
By election day, Van de Kamp was seen as more liberal. The late-deciding women described themselves as somewhat more liberal than the rest, and cited the environment and education as the most important issues.
So Van de Kamp got the votes of women who favored him as the more liberal, while Feinstein got the support of men who favored her as most likely to win.
Men are a rather large demographic group in America-and a group the Democrats have been having trouble winning for some years now. Which is why Democrats, and Republicans, are watching closely to see if Feinstein can appeal to both sexes in a general election the way she did in a primary.
