What Are the Chances of a Woman Winning the Presidency?
June 28, 2011
by Lara Brown PhD
|According to a Rasmussen Reports survey out yesterday, “nearly three-out-of-four voters (73%) now think it’s at least somewhat likely that a woman will be elected president in the next 10 years.” We should be jumping for joy. Not so much. Or at least not just yet.
Duke Professor John Aldrich has explained: “The standard line that anyone can grow up to be president may be true, but it is true only if one grows up to be a major party nominee.”
Rep. Michele Bachmann announces her candidacy for president on June 27, 2011.
Although Elizabeth Dole ran for the Republican nomination in 2000 and Carol Moseley Braun ran for the Democratic nomination in 2004, both withdrew from the contests before the Iowa caucuses even met.
Where does this leave newly-announced Representative Michele Bachmann and former Governor Sarah Palin, should she decide to make the run? In better shape than one might imagine.
Both are proficient fundraisers. Even though Palin was not a candidate in 2010, she raised nearly $5.7 million through Sarah PAC. While running for reelection, Michelle Bachmann’s Committee raised over $13.5 million in the 2010 political cycle.
Both are admired and supported by voters who consider themselves either part of the Tea Party or sympathetic to the movement’s primary concerns: profligate federal spending and big government.
Ad for the new documentary on Sarah Palin.
And the clincher, Governor Nikki Haley of South Carolina may help make one of them the Republican nominee before that state’s votes are even cast. Haley is expected to veto a bill that would provide state funding for the 2012 primary.
Should Haley proceed as expected and should the State Republican Party respond by deciding to move to a closed caucus system instead of closed primary (because it is less expensive), then the Palmetto State’s contest will favor – even more than it does – the conservative candidates in the race. Iowa on steroids. This means that Governor Tim Pawlenty, former Governor Mitt Romney, and Ambassador Jon Huntsman would have difficulty gaining traction among the activists. This is even more true, if they lose the earlier contests of Iowa and New Hampshire.
South Carolina – also home to Senator Jim DeMint and a raucous Tea Party – appears poised once again to choose the Republican nominee (G.W. Bush defeated McCain in 2000, and McCain defeated Romney and Huckabee in 2008). The difference this time is that a woman’s leadership in the State House may lead to a woman’s leadership in the White House.
But this is only true if women vote for women. Both in 1984, when Geraldine Ferraro was on the Democratic ticket with Walter Mondale and in 2008, when Sarah Palin was on the Republican ticket with John McCain, the paucity of women voters supporting these tickets (approximately 44 percent of women voted for each ticket) was one of the key factors in these candidates’ losses.
The choice to have a woman in the White House is a woman’s choice. It is time to make the choice to support political women.
Yes, but what people say and what they do are two different things. They may say its time for a woman president to a survey taker to appear to have a toe-hold in the 21st century, but their behavior in the voting booth might not reflect that.
The press was absolutely enthralled about having Geraldine as the number two on the ticket, and then salivated at the prospect of bringing her down. Same goes for other female candidates who have the unmitigated gall to run for national office.
I think we need to call the press out on all their name calling re: female candidates and ask them if the inserted an ethnic/racial or religious group in place of “female” if they would have the nerve to voice these foolish ideas in polite company. I think the answer would be “no.”
I would like to think that I will see a woman in the WH in my lifetime.
I think the two parties like to stick to Caucuses because they are easier to corrupt than a state run election. They take more time than voting so it excludes people who have to work the day they are held, you can’t mail in your ballot this excludes people who could vote sometime within the 12 hours a poll is open but not at the specific caucus time. At my 2008 caucus people were herded into a packed hot building and forced to stand there for over an hour before things got underway which meant no elders were allowed to vote because they couldn’t take it. Both parties are corrupt neither has any idea how to run the country effectively and neither gives a rats ass about The People.
The ONLY way we can break the ceiling is if women unite behind women candidates- Obama beat HRC imho because women as a group did not unite behind her and as a group did not defend her- ditto for Palin and now we see Palinizing being used against Bachman without a word from left side women groups in her defense
Bruce,
Obama “won” because the caucuses were rigged (please visit Dr. Lynnete Long’s website which has her comprehensive investigation into the caucus fraud perpetrated upon Hillary voters.
Moreover, the DNC changed to rules for those states who did not get behind obama and nullified the voters of Michigan and Florida, while giving a pass to those other states which changes their primary dates, but had supported obama. Then the DNC Rules & By-laws committee met on May 31st and proceeded to violate their own rules by meeting behind closed doors and deciding which delegates from Michigan to give to obama, even though he wasn’t even on the ballot and then, to add insult to injury, gave 4 of Hillary’s delegates to obama, he hadn’t even earned!
I went to Denver, along with other PUMA groups, to protest what had occurred and met some of the Hillary super delegates and they told us that they were being intimidated and even told NOT to vote for Hillary at the convention by the party leaders. They wanted obama to win on the first ballot and that they did not want a floor vote at all to ensure that Hillary would not even be given the same consideration of every other male candidate since the beginning of these conventions.
All of this BS despite Hillary winning the popular vote. So, obama did not “beat” Hillary. He was cheated into the WH, and expect any of the other women running will be given the same treatment.
Bruce:
As you might expect, I couldn’t agree more. I was disheartened to see a woman colleague (a fellow political scientist), Jennifer Lawless, who has written amazing works addressing the few number of women in politics, post an opinion piece on CNN.com, which says that she would prefer the “glass ceiling” to a Bachmann presidency.
I do hope that more women can reject and denounce the sexist media frames and unite around women candidates. When there is parity, then it will be the time to pick your women candidates carefully. But until then, we need to support all of the women who jump into the arena and take the risks that come with pursuing leadership positions in the spotlight.
Thanks!
Lara
The odds of my voting for a woman this time around are at 100%.
Lara and Bruce,
Your points are well taken and right on target. However, you cannot dismiss the fact that our elections are a sham. As I pointed out above, Hillary actually won the popular vote, but somehow, still managed to lose to obama. Did you ever research all the reasons why? I think you should because it goes to the very heart of why more qualified women are not being elected over less qualified men.
I have worked in election reform for over 7 years and have witnessed first hand how election officials and party leaders (predominantly male), particularly in battleground states, can easily manipulate the outcome of an election by how and when they count absentee ballots (in private, without the benefit of any “chain of custody to ensure an honest count) and more significantly, by the fact that they must allow (due to trade secret laws) the voting machine manufacturer to control the machines. Why do we allow trade secret laws to mandate that voting machine manufacturers have the right to control our elections? What’s worse is that they usually have one of their own IT guys running the machine during an election and they never allow any election to independently test the voting system (nor observe the inner workings at all) during the election to make certain the machine is functioning properly. One would think that this should be a huge red flag to any American who believes in honest elections that our elections are not in the hands of the people but in the hands of voting machine companies and the party leaders, who both have a vested interest in controling the outcome of an election.
Election reform advocates have long since proven that the election process is so flawed and open for manipulation, that if we truly want to see any women elected into political office, we must first fix the “cause: and not the “symptom” of why they have such a difficult time getting “elected.”
It is my belief that, if women united and put the full force of their power behind the need for election reform and demanded that we stop using non-transparent voting systems which make it impossible for a citizen to “see” their votes counted, if we want to know who really won, we would see a major difference in the make-up of our government.
Other countries have recognized the dangers these voting systems (not to mention any complicated election process which is controlled totally from the inside without citizen oversight) is to the survival of a democratic republic and took bold action by banning these machines. You have to ask yourself, “if former Nazi Germany understands the absolute need for transparency in an election, then why can’t the so-called “greatest democracy in the world” recognize the dangers of maintaining the status quo presently being used in our elections process?” We better take notice or we will not survive as a republic, much less elect women to high office, if our elections process remains a non-transparent, secret process, controlled by a few.
I am convinced that if we can achieve transparency in our elections through a properly conducted public hand count, we will see a plethora of women elected to high office. If we don’t, we will continue to see little to no change in women achieving equity with men and the eventual end to the democratic process as we know it.
If you think I’m being overly dramatic about elections and their impact on women being elected, please visit Dr. Lynette Long’s website and see how the Dem party leaders manipulated the election process to steal the nomination from Hillary. Or go to YouTube and watch “Hacking Democracy” for free and see how these machines are a death threat to a democratic election.
If the dem leaders were willing to blatantly take the nomination from Hillary (despite the will of the people) out in the open for everyone to see, do you think they won’t continue to do it to other women?
Kathleen you are completely right,but dont forget many of those individuals who helped Obama were women-that was my point-see Lara’s note above concerning Jennifer Lawless’article- that is the disunity of which I was speaking- As long as women such as Lawless write what they do there will not be a woman president
Bruce,
Of course, women were “part” of that process. However, men hold the lion’s share of power and control of the elections process and the political parties (and about everything else) and without their almost total control of the process, these women would have very little, if any, impact on what happened to Hillary. Yet, it is they who get the lion’s share of the focus and blame.
My point was that the millions of women who did support Hillary and Palin and now Michele, ironically, will continue to have very little impact, if our elections continue in the manner that they have for decades. Again, we should focus on the cause and not the symptom, because that’s how we can affect real change.
It is true, neither the Dems or Republicans are committed to democracy, they find it really inconvenient for their plans of idealistic world domination. You can get back at them though. In Washington (state) we passed a peoples initiative that said only the top two candidates from the Primary can go on the general election ballot. Neither party has any right to put a candidate on the general election ballot otherwise. And if two independents win the primary for governor then there are no R’s or D’s on the ballot. Further we changed many offices to non-partisan and prevent candidates form listing themselves by their political party affiliation. Of course the parties found this outrageous and took it to the Supreme Court and they lost. If Washington did it, your state can do it too.
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