Women overwhelmingly favor Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley in his re-election bid against Republican challenger Bob Ehrlich because they view O’Malley as friendlier to families, teachers and social welfare programs, according to political analysts.
O’Malley is charging ahead of Ehrlich with a 10-point lead, according to the latest Rasmussen Reports poll released on Monday. O’Malley has a 22-point lead among likely female voters, while the candidates’ support among male voters tips slightly in favor of Ehrlich, according to the survey taken on Sunday. The poll has a 4-point margin of error.
In 2006, O’Malley carried female voters by 20 points over then-Gov. Ehrlich and unseated the incumbent with 53 percent of votes overall.
“Women are more concerned about family and health care and education,” said Frances Lee, a government and politics professor at the University of Maryland. “The Democratic Party overall has a stronger reputation in those areas.”
Nationally, 56 percent of women voted for President Obama in 2008, compared with 43 percent for Republican John McCain. Male votes were almost evenly split between the two candidates.
O’Malley has won over Maryland’s women by positioning himself as a cheerleader for the federal health care overhaul, union benefits and record education spending, said Laura Hussey, assistant politics professor at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County.
“Women are much more open to the idea of an active social welfare state, to which men are much more hostile,” Hussey said, adding that “social welfare is at the front and center of this campaign.”
Ehrlich, meanwhile, would seek to exempt the state from federal health care mandates, and he has angered state employees by pledging to enact drastic pension reform and tweak education funding formulas. Most of O’Malley’s ads paint Ehrlich as a pawn of “big business” working against Maryland families.
But Ehrlich supporter Tammy Larkin says business and domestic interests are codependent.
“People think that if you are a Republican and pro-business that you are anti-family,” said Larkin, a White Marsh Democrat and founder of grassroots groups Women for Ehrlich and Moms for Ehrlich. “What families need is financial stability,” which she said Ehrlich would deliver first by rolling back O’Malley’s 20 percent increase in the state sales tax.
O’Malley only has “sweet talk and swagger” to offer voters, Larkin said.
That may be all he needs, said University of Maryland assistant communication professor Kristy Maddux.
O’Malley’s popularity among women is driven by his expensive ads and has nothing to do with his — or Ehrlich’s — policy proposals, Maddux said.
“I have a hard time thinking this disparity [between male and female voters] is about policy at all,” she said. “This campaign has been far from substantive. … It’s hard to believe either of them anymore.”
