Pollsters Celinda Lake and Linda DiVall say 1992 may be the year of the woman candidate, but forget about a cohesive, one-issue ”women`s vote” in the presidential race.
Lake and DiVall say women voters are not a single-minded voting sorority. In fact, DiVall, who grew up a Republican in Mt. Prospect, Ill., and now is president of her own polling firm, American Viewpoint Inc. in Alexandria, Va., says viewing women as a monolithic bloc is disdainful toward the nation`s diverse female voters.
That bloc of American women, who won the right to vote in 1920, made up 53.5 percent of registered voters in the 1988 presidential election, according to U.S. Census figures. More women than men voted in that 1988 election, about 58.3 percent of the registered women compared with 56.4 percent of the registered men, the Census reports.
While there is no one issue that will determine how women as a whole will cast their ballots for president, there is clarity on other questions swirling about this election year, say DiVall, a pollster for Republicans, and Lake, a pollster for Democrats who is a partner in Greenberg-Lake: The Analysis Group in Washington. Lake and DiVall agree that at least the way it looks at this point in the race, abortion probably won`t be the deciding factor it might have been had the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in either extreme in Casey vs. Planned Parenthood.
And they say maybe, just maybe, this really will be a year when more women are elected to statewide and national office.
”We faced the same (Year of the Woman) question in 1984, `88 and 1990,” says the 39-year-old DiVall, who used to join her father, a Republican precinct worker and block captain, on his political rounds.
”I`m aging, looking for the `Year of the Woman,` ” says Lake, 39, a partner in Greenberg-Lake: The Analysis Group Inc. in Washington.
”Here we go again in 1992,” says DiVall, who conducted polling for Secretary of Labor Lynn Martin`s unsuccessful U.S. Senate race in Illinois in 1990. ”But I think there are some differences.”
A desire for change, the buzzword of this election cycle, is one difference, say the two pollsters, who spoke recently in Chicago.
Voters are dissatisfied with incumbents and that helps challengers, and particularly women candidates because they are seen as outsiders, the two say. In addition, voters are thinking local. Women have an edge with voters on domestic questions such as health care, education and family issues, says Lake. And, of course, the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings and testimony by Anita Hill lit a match under women candidates and voters, Lake and DiVall agree.
Although not restricting their work to women condidates, Lake and DiVall do fill niches.
DiVall started her survey career with the Republican National Committee after she graduated with a bachelor`s degree in political science in 1974. She worked for the National Republican Congressional Committee and President Bush`s campaign in 1988.
During the `80s, DiVall founded her company and also helped identify and analyze sources of the Republican Party`s gender gap with women voters.
In 1984, 62 percent of men who voted cast ballots for Ronald Reagan, compared with 55 percent of women. In 1988, 57 percent of men who voted, but 50 percent of women, voted for George Bush, according to statistics from the Center for Political Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
Lake, who has a bachelor`s degree in government studies from Smith College and a master`s in survey research and political science from the University of Michigan, likewise has been prominent in women`s-issue polling and with women clients. In 1986 and 1987, she directed the Women`s Campaign Fund, an organization that supports pro-abortion women candidates.
While both Lake and DiVall have worked on past presidential races, neither is directly hired for the race this year. Lake, who grew up on a cattle ranch near Bozeman, Mont., is handling polling for, among others, Cook County Recorder Carol Moseley Braun`s U.S. Senate campaign. DiVall`s GOP heavyweights include the re-election campaign of U.S. House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich of Georgia.
Lake and DiVall, both supporters of abortion rights, say abortion probably won`t be an overwhelming vote-decider in the 1992 presidential race. ”The court came down right where the American public opinion is,” says DiVall, noting that 84 percent of the public is in the middle, with 8 percent at each end of the spectrum.
Lake, raised a Republican although she switched to the Democratic Party when the women`s movement grew and the Vietnam War raged during the 1970s, maintains Clinton is ahead with women at least partly because of his focus on domestic issues.
Women have questions about Clinton`s character and trustworthiness, DiVall says. They already know and trust Bush on those fronts, she says.
But Bush should take heed of polling that indicates 83 percent of the country believes things are seriously off track, from the economy to family issues and health care, says DiVall.
The president, says DiVall, needs to set women`s minds at ease regarding future generations by discussing education, jobs, health care,
competitiveness, all domestic issues.
