Poll: Romney erases Obama’s lead among women

What gender gap?

Less than two weeks out from election day, Republican Mitt Romney has erased President Barack Obama’s 16-point advantage among women, a new Associated Press-GfK poll shows. And the president, in turn, has largely eliminated Romney’s edge among men.

Those churning gender dynamics leave the presidential race still a virtual dead heat, with Romney favoured by 47% of likely voters and Obama by 45%, a result within the poll’s margin of sampling error, the survey shows.

After a commanding first debate performance and a generally good month, Romney has gained ground with Americans on a number of important fronts, including their confidence in how he would handle the economy and their impressions of his ability to understand their problems.

At the same time, expectations that Obama will be re-elected have slipped: Half of voters now expect the president to win a second term, down from 55% a month earlier.

For all the good news for Republicans, however, what matters most is Romney’s standing in the handful of states whose electoral votes still are up for grabs. And polls in a number of those battleground states still appear to favour Obama.

As the election nears, Romney has been playing down social issues and trying to project a more moderate stance on matters such as abortion in an effort to court female voters. The AP-GfK poll shows Romney pulling even with Obama among women at 47-47 after lagging by 16 points a month earlier.

But his campaign is grappling with the fallout from a comment by a Romney-endorsed Senate candidate in Indiana, who said when a woman becomes pregnant during a rape “that’s something God intended.”

Romney, through aides, quickly distanced himself from the remark by Republican Richard Mourdock. But Obama was happy to keep the issue current, telling a crowd in Florida: “As we saw again this week, I don’t think any politician in Washington, most of whom are male, should be making healthcare decisions for women,” Obama said. “Women can make those decisions themselves.”

A renewed focus on social issues would be an unwelcome development for Romney: Among female likely voters, 55% say Obama would make the right decisions on women’s issues, compared with 41% who think Romney would.

Romney’s pitch to women has been focused squarely on the economy, making the case that what women want most is to ensure their families and their country are on a solid financial footing.

A month ago, women favoured Obama on the economy 56% to 40%. Now, the split has shifted to 49% for Romney and 45% for Obama.

Similarly, Obama’s lead among women as the candidate who better understands the people’s problems has narrowed considerably from a 58-36 last month to 50-43 now.

Monica Jensen, a 55-year-old independent from Alabama says she voted for Obama in 2008 but will shift her vote to Romney this time, largely because of the economy. “I’m ready for a change,” she said. “I want to see the economy go in a different direction.”

Ginny Lewis, a Democrat and 72-year-old retired district attorney from Princeton, says she’ll vote for Romney because “I’m tired of the Republicans blaming all the debt on Democrats, so let them take over and see what they do.”

Overall, people are more optimistic about the economy and unemployment in the coming year than they have been at any point in AP-GfK polling going back to Mar 2011, when the poll first started asking those questions. And likely voters are even more optimistic than other adults.

Nearly six in 10 likely voters think the economy will improve next year, up from 46% last month. And 42% think the number of unemployed Americans will drop in the next year, up from 32% in September.