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Hillary a tough sell to men
07/08/2007 22:06 - (SA)
Washington - Women are flocking to Hillary Rodham Clinton's Democratic presidential candidacy and men are doing the same for Republican Fred Thompson.
Yet for all that support, both candidates are showing early vulnerabilities wooing US voters of the opposite sex.
Thompson, the former Tennessee senator and tough-guy actor on television's Law and Order, gets 68% of his support from males as he edges toward a run for the Republican presidential nomination, far more than other hopefuls, according to recent polls.
While he and front-runner Rudy Giuliani each draw nearly a quarter of the Republican male vote, he significantly trails his chief rivals among women.
A slender lead among men
"He seems to be closer to the conservative that I am," said Richard Bussa, 60, a Thompson supporter and retired newspaper writer. "Playing on the police shows he's on, he does present a hard-nosed, law-and-order-type guy."
On the Democratic side, Clinton is showing a mirror-image weakness, though one less stark than Thompson's.
The New York senator and former first lady gets 63% of her support from women and has more than twice the female backing of her nearest rival, Senator Barack Obama, in surveys.
She has only a slender lead among men, who are splitting their allegiances about evenly among her, Obama and former
Vice-President Al Gore, who has not said he will run.
"She's competent, she's tough," said Diana Roberts, 54, a teacher. "And I think it's time" for a woman to be president.
These patterns make Clinton and Thompson formidable forces within their parties. A slight majority of Republican voters are men, who tend to be more conservative than women, while just more than half of Democratic voters are female, according to figures from recent national elections.
Analysts caution that women tend to choose their candidates later than men, and that many people are not closely following the campaigns yet.
Even so, Thompson and Clinton would each want to attract more voters of the opposite sex should they lead their parties in the 2008 general elections.
- AP
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