Undecided white female baby boomers may hold key to election’s outcome

Forty-four percent of these women remain open to either candidate.

WASHINGTON (AP) — In past presidential elections, Veronica Deveso could have told you by now who she was backing and why. Not this time.

All the former taxi dispatcher from Hamburg, N.Y., wants is a candidate “with a solid plan to do something, almost anything,” to bolster the economy and end the Iraq war. Dissatisfied with the campaign rhetoric she’s heard so far, Deveso, 56, remains “right at the top of that wall and could fall either way.”

The wall she’s perched on is crowded. White women age 45 to 64, such as Deveso, are one of this year’s most hotly contested voting blocs, evenly divided between Barack Obama and John McCain, and wide open to being pulled either way, according to a recent Associated Press-GfK Poll.

There are plenty of them, too, prompting both presidential campaigns to woo them vigorously. About one in six voters in the 2004 presidential election was a white woman in that age range, polls showed.

These are the Boomer Women — middle-aged children of the post-World War II generation. Many are veterans of balancing jobs with running households, and often acutely aware of their families’ economic pressures because they write the checks, buy the groceries and fill the tank with gas.

They’re feisty, used to demanding answers and making choices. With a worldwide economy that’s lurching toward recession, they’re demanding that the presidential candidates show them concrete solutions to the financial crisis and other problems.

As a group, these middle-aged white women have not yet been swayed by either contender — in contrast to black and Hispanic women, who back Obama by the same heavy proportions that minority-group men do. They’re split between McCain and Obama and identify themselves as Democrats or Republicans in about equal numbers, the AP-GfK poll showed.

“If they came up with something about the economy that really made me feel like they have a really good handle on it,” it would help, said Rae Ann Priester, 52, of Fresno, Calif., who is leaning toward Obama but could switch. “They’re sort of dancing around the issue.”

A sizable 44 percent of them remain persuadable — that is, either completely undecided or favoring one candidate while conceding they may change their minds. That’s bigger than the 33 percent of all voters are still persuadable.

“If you’re aged right in the middle like me, it’s hard to decide,” said Deborah Nance, 56, of Wilmington, Del. “Go with the seasoned guy who might get in there and die the next day, or go with the young guy who you really don’t know much about.”

The evenly divided Boomer Women stand in contrast to voters overall, who polls show have leaned toward Obama since the financial crisis intensified.