Approximately 100 students, faculty and members of the community met on Oct. 15 for a pre-election panel, in which they discussed which party stood the best chance in the upcoming midterm elections.
Presented by the School of Public Affairs’ Women and Politics Institute and moderated by Director Jennifer Lawless, the panel included Margie Omero, Managing Director of the bipartisan communications firm Purple Strategies, John Sides, associate professor at George Washington University, and Glen Bolger, partner and co-founder of Public Opinion Strategies.
The panel overwhelmingly agreed that the Republican Party had the best chance at gaining seats in Congress in the 2014 midterm elections and emphasized the influence of female voters on election results.
Omero predicted that any congressional seats gained by Democratic Party’s will be largely attributed to the participation of female voters.
“In order for Democrats to win in this election, and we can assume pretty confidently that men aren’t going to vote Democratic in the midterm. It has to be Democrat women,” Omero said.
Bolger found statistical evidence through his research that winning the votes of women is essential to a victorious election.
“When a Republican wins a close senate race, they get at least 46 percent or more of the major party vote among women,” Bolger said. “You can’t lose the women bid.”
It isn’t necessarily true that an increase in women voting equates to an increase in Democratic candidates elected, according to Omero. However, a gender gap does exist between the two political parties.
Omero explained that focus groups have shown women feel generally misunderstood by all politicians but less so by Democrats.
“Women don’t feel that politicians get it, period,” Omero said. “And the reason there’s a gender gap is that they tend to feel that Democrats get it a little bit more than Republicans do.”
Candidates focus so strongly on women’s issues like equal pay, reproductive rights, abortion and minimum wage because they know this gender gap exists, and how important it is to win the female electorate, according to Omero.
However, Sides doubted that focusing on specific issues increased the likelihood of winning women’s votes or any votes at all. When looking at how new outlets’ use of the phrases “abortion” and “birth control” affected how women felt about Barack Obama, Sides found there was no significant relationship between the two.
During an election year when most of the states electing congress people are ones that Romney won in 2012, female candidates are not expected to win many congressional races, according to Bolger.
Omero conceded that 2014 will not be “the year of the woman” in Washington, however it will present female voters with an important opportunity to create unexpected results this election season.
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