BONNIE ERBE Watching how women vote

The hot topic among most political pollsters is whether the American public's new focus overseas will ultimately be good or bad for President Bush's re-election prospects in November.
Some are betting on bad, as in this April 14 dispatch from BusinessWeek online that lead with the splasher, "Suddenly, Iraq is overshadowing all else. That's bad news for the president, even though John Kerry isn't making big gains. For the first time since the quagmire of Vietnam and the humiliating Iranian hostage crisis, it looks like international events rather than economic issues could shape an American presidential campaign."
Well, OK, except for one factor: The president's poll numbers seem to have gone nowhere but up since his midweek news conference defending his handling of 9/11 and his decision to invade Iraq. Those numbers rose despite mounting evidence the president could have done more to prevent the 9/11 attacks. And they rose despite an ascending death toll in Iraq among U.S. soldiers, coupled with an explosion of seemingly unremitting violence.
My take is we are a country so deeply divided politically and yet so passionately dismissive of our right to vote (in the 2000 elections, 51 percent of eligible voters turned out; by comparison in Israel, nationwide elections usually prompt 90 percent turnout rates) that polls taken much more than a month from the election tell little about how the contest will ultimately play out.
Shifting focus
Yes, Iraq will be an important factor if newspaper front pages continue to sport ghastly photographs of bloody bodies and flipped-out kidnapping victims (and TV news shows and Internet sites do likewise). But if the violence subsides between now, and say, even as late as October, the pervasive news images will fade and so will voters' (real or imagined) focus on matters overseas.
A much more interesting (yet just as devoutly ignored by the same media who worship at conflict's altar) demographic trend is one brought to my attention by Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research. While pollsters heap attention on voters' thoughts on war and the economy, they pay less attention to the different ways in which eligible male vs. eligible female voters respond to these issues. Why are gender differences important? Because women are an increasing percentage of the voting public.
Historically, in U.S. presidential elections held since women wielded the right to vote, men voted at higher rates than women. Even as recently as 40 years ago 72 percent of voting-age males voted, vs. 67 percent of voting-age females. By 1980, the two genders participated equally. Since then, women have turned out in greater ratios than men by growing percentages, so that by 2000, 56 percent of eligible women voted vs. 53 percent of eligible men.
The last presidential election sported the widest gender voting gap ever reported by the Census Bureau. And this relatively small crack promises to do nothing but ripen into a chasm, as more women participate in the workplace and as they continue to live longer than men. Employed Americans and seniors vote in higher percentages than other demographic groups.
Education factor
Finally, Greenberg's inside twist. In an omnibus poll she conducted of 1,000 likely voters last week (accurate to plus or minus 3 percentage points) she notes distinct differences between college vs. noncollege educated women and a keen reversal in those women's voting patterns.
College-educated women used to vote reliably Republican. But Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., is now beating President Bush by 51 percent to 44 percent among college educated women. Conversely, among noncollege educated women, Kerry is losing to President Bush by 9 points -- 53 percent to 44 percent. Noncollege educated women used to be a reliably Democratic support group. They no longer are.
Young, noncollege educated married women with children are considerably more conservative than they used to be. That's a win for Republicans and a loss for Democrats. It's a major news story, but one largely ignored by the press, perhaps because it is not bleeding. Corporations focus on growth markets. These voters are a potential growth market for either party. But Iraq bleeds.
XBonnie Erbe, TV host, writes this column for Scripps Howard News Service.