Gallup: Obama Gaining With Women

According to Gallup, Senator Barack Obama is narrowing the gap between himself and Senator Hillary Clinton with Gyno-American voters (apologies to Merril Markoe).

The accompanying table displays the trend in vote choice between Clinton and Obama by gender for the three-day rolling averages of polls conducted over the last 10 days. Comparing the three-day average of polls conducted Jan. 18-20 to the three-day average of polls conducted Jan. 28-30 shows that while Clinton's level of support among men has essentially stayed the same, she has lost 8 points among women. At the same time, Obama has gained 6 points among men, but has gained even more -- 13 points -- among women.

So, what gives? Is it the Oprah effect? Obama's switch to Axe body spray? "Women's intuition"?

Hold on before you fire off those comments calling me a sexist. Those silly reasons I gave are meant to illustrate a sexist idea that is embedded in the poll itself. What I really think it shows is that women, Surprise!, are just like anyone else. The shift in female support for Obama is statistically significant, to be sure, but a lot happened between those polling dates. Although the result is gender-related, there's nothing to suggest that the causes are.

The fact is, maybe this says less about women, and more about men:

The major trend evident in the Gallup Poll Daily tracking data over the last 10 days has been the narrowing of the race for the Democratic nomination. Obama has been gradually chipping away at Clinton's lead, to the point where he trails her by just a few points.

So, maybe women are ahead of the curve, and men are just stubborn. The poll doesn't take into account the migration of individual voters to and from John Edwards or undecided. The exit of John Edwards from the race renders a lot of this data moot, anyway, as that is sure to have an impact that hasn't been measured yet, although Obama has just picked up a significant chunk of Edwards' labor support.

This is why I caution people to be leery of polling data, especially demographic polls. They are just numbers, they cannot explain themselves. Every voter has an identity, but numbers like these can't tell you if that is the engine that drives their decisions. In other words, the polls may be measuring the wind, when the current is what's causing the movement.

Gallup's most recent tracking poll shows Clinton and Obama in a statistical tie, 44% to 41% respectively, with a 3 point margin of error. All these polls should be telling you is that it's anyone's ballgame.

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Update - Response to comments:

TFitz,
thanks for the support. There is something to what you say. I have noted that a lot of comments and commentators don't seem to be on the level. When I see the identical "Hmmm...interesting story about Obama..." comment 50 times, I get suspicious, and there do seem to be more of these "copy and paste" comments from pro-Hillary or anti-Obama people, but that doesn't mean they aren't acting independently.

I delete any and all comments that imply debunked falsehoods or unsourced allegations about Obama and Hillary, and there are way more about Obama. This doesn't say anything about Hillary, but it is annoying.

As for "Pedro", I don't think that's a real person. Just a hunch.

There's a fine line between what I will and won't delete, but by and large, I let as much in as I can. Those really, really long comments where they copy and paste a whole article I delete if I catch them right away, or there's no real point, but people, just post a link and maybe a paragraph.

There are a lot of really great, substantive comments here, too, and I'm proud of those.

Update: TFitz,
it is important to keep in mind that Open Secrets totals up individual donations from employees of a company or industry, so those figures don't always mean what you think they do.

Update: 6:51 pm Marie,
"Monica has absolutely nothing to do with the hardcore policymaking that Hilary Clinton has worked on. The two names don't even belong in the same sentence."

Really? You're gonna go with "hardcore" as your adjective there?

And Bill, LOL, where, indeed, have all the flowers gone?