So much for Hillary Rodham Clinton‘s plan to win the women’s vote. After months of banking on fellow females to carry her to victory, Clinton lost the women’s vote to Barack Obama, 35 percent to 30 percent, on her way to a third-place finish in the Iowa Democratic caucus.
“Some women don’t like Hillary,” Des Moines Register political analyst David Yepsen told The Examiner. “I noticed some age and class differences. Older, blue collar women liked Clinton while younger and professional women liked Obama.”
Dianne Bystrom, director of the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics at Iowa State University, said there is a curious lack of excitement among young women about the prospect of Clinton becoming the first female president.
“They see Hillary Clinton as being older, as being kind of like their mom,” Bystrom told The Examiner. “And they see Obama as young and exciting and something new.”
Bysrom pointed out that Clinton won more older women than Obama, but those gains were more than offset by Obama’s ability to win over younger voters of both genders.
Senior Clinton adviser Ann Lewis agreed.
“We did very well with women over 50, who had been our principal target in Iowa,” she told MSNBC. “But a whole lot more young people, including young women, came out.”
Lewis acknowledged that Clinton had failed to reach out to those young women in Iowa and intends to do a better job in New Hampshire, which holds the nation’s first primary on Tuesday.
“People aren’t going to vote for you if you don’t talk with them,” Lewis said. “And we’ve probably got to do a much better job of talking with and reaching out to those younger women.”
