Men Don’t Like Hillary: Clinton is fighting an uphill battle for male votes

February 25, 2008

Here in the Lone Star State and across the nation, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has a problem with men.

While Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama are in a statistical tie in advance of the crucial Texas Democratic presidential primary March 4, Obama has a 10- point lead among white men, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found last week.

That’s nothing unusual. While the New York senator has won 12 of the 25 presidential caucuses or primaries in which entrance or exit polls have been done, she has won the men’s vote in only five contests.

What’s more, the gender gap between Clinton’s share of the female vote and her share of the male vote in all 25 of those contests averages 9.2 percentage points.

Some explanations could be found here in the polyglot crowd of 6,000 that flocked to see Obama at a hockey arena on the Gulf Coast last week.

Interviews with about a dozen men there, and with dozens of others in 11 other states since December, revealed few signs of overt sexism. But many men spoke of a bond with Obama that transcended race, as well as a sense of distance from Clinton tied to her gender, her personality or her history.

For example, Bill Dooling, a retired social studies teacher from Massachusetts who traveled to Texas to volunteer for Obama, said he bonded with the Illinois senator while reading his book “Dreams from My Father,” where he learned of their mutual passion for basketball.

Asked about men’s preference for Obama, Dooling said: “Maybe it’s just a comfort-level thing.”

He termed Clinton “talented, good and very competent,” while adding: “I just don’t think Hillary has the same ability as Barack to bring about the change we need.”

There’s no doubt that countless men feel the same way.

In the 25 contests where voters were polled on their preferences, Obama scored an average lead of 12 percentage points among men only.

Clinton’s struggles with male voters are fairly consistent around the country and throughout the primary season, putting a ceiling on her share of the vote in state after state.

Other factors, including the inroads that Obama has made with women and lower-income voters, appear to have more to do with Clinton’s current 10- contest losing streak, with one glaring exception.

In Wisconsin last week, Clinton’s gender gap was 19 points — a figure that Kathleen Dolan, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, termed “eye-popping.”

Scholars who study female political candidates say they’re shocked to see such a gender gap developing in Democratic primaries and caucuses. Until now, the gender gap was a phenomenon largely confined to general elections, where the Republican has for decades won a far larger share of the male vote for president than the Democrat has.

Gender stereotypes

Clinton’s problem with Democratic men could stem from their very nature, said Susan Carroll, senior scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

Increasingly, the male Democrat is not the lunch-bucket-toting union man of old, but rather a highly educated, affluent professional — exactly the type of voter that Obama’s post-partisan message of change appeals to most.

“Some of it is really a class thing,” Carroll said.

But there also appears to be something more basic at play.

“Polls have shown that men tended to be more accepting of an African-American male than a female as president,” said Dianne Bystrom, director of the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics at Iowa State University. “This all really taps into the gender stereotypes in this country. We still have a long way to go.”

Those stereotypes — that men are decisive and strong and women more conciliatory — put Clinton in a tough spot, several political scientists said.

She needs to appear tough in order to persuade voters that she can handle the life-and-death decisions of the presidency. But the moment she seems too tough, she confounds men’s expectations.

Clinton’s dilemma comes alive in the words of the men of Texas.

At the Obama rally in Corpus Christi, Lino Lopez, a high school senior, said he will cast his first vote for president for Obama in part because he thinks he’ll be tougher with America’s adversaries than Clinton will.

“I don’t think she’d be aggressive enough,” Lopez said. Asked why, he added: “I don’t know . . . she’s a woman.”

Meanwhile in Dallas, businessman Richard Collins is pouring money into an anti- Clinton Web site called “Stop Her Now” because he sees in Clinton exactly what Lopez doesn’t see.

“She comes across as a tough, aggressive woman who is not likable,” Collins said. “She’s got a problem with men that few other politicians have.”

Clinton is facing another conundrum, too. Research has shown that women react poorly to negative campaign commercials while “men tend to get turned on by it,” noted Linda Fowler, a political scientist at Dartmouth College.

Perhaps for that reason, Clinton has struggled in her efforts to go negative on Obama, Fowler said.

The Clinton campaign didn’t run any negative ads against Obama until the Wisconsin primary, instead relying on campaign surrogates led by former President Bill Clinton to do the dirty work. Fowler termed that move “disastrous.”

And when Clinton herself tried to go negative against Obama in a debate last week by calling his purloining of a supporter’s campaign rhetoric “change you can Xerox,” the audience booed.

“If she goes negative, what’s the first five-letter word that rhymes with rich that’s going to be the next thing out of people’s mouths?” Dolan asked.

Making matters more complicated still is that Hillary Clinton is no ordinary female politician.

Some of the disdain that some men have for Clinton may stem from ideological differences or sexism, said Susan MacManus, a political scientist at the University of South Florida.

Personality problems

“But some of it is driven by the fact that some gentlemen just don’t like Hillary,” Mac- Manus said. “It’s hard to separate the two, but I think a considerable amount of it is personality-driven.”

Sure enough, men interviewed in Texas and elsewhere were far more likely to comment on Clinton and her persona or her saga rather than her gender.

For many, like Rudy “Tejano” Pena of Corpus Christi, Obama’s abilities simply trump Clinton’s.

“This is where change begins,” Pena said. “This is a guy who is genuine, intelligent, articulate — a real leader.”

Asked about Clinton, Pena said: “Hillary is a smart woman, but she’s been part of the same leadership we’ve had for so long.”

Meanwhile, Frank Ajmatner, who lives near Corpus Christi, cited a long list of complaints about Clinton that culminated in her reaction to her husband’s affair with an intern while serving as president.

“She doesn’t have it,” said Ajmatner, a real estate appraiser. “She doesn’t have the vision. She’s not inspiring. And she didn’t divorce Bill when he pulled all that stuff and dishonored the Oval Office.”

Comfort level’

Clinton campaign officials did not respond to requests for comment on this article. And David Plouffe, Obama’s campaign manager, said Obama’s strength with men was all about their support for his policies.

“They’re really just settling on the fact that Barack Obama will bring fundamental change to Washington,” Plouffe said.

That’s clearly what many in the loud, rollicking crowd at Corpus Christi’s American Bank Center Arena thought. The vast sea of white, black and brown faces included far fewer middle-aged and older women than you’ll find in the typical Clinton crowd and far more men of all ages.

Asked to explain it all, Alex Garcia Jr., the Democratic chairman in Nueces County who is neutral in the presidential race, said: “I’m a true believer that men, and especially the older generation, have a tendency to prefer male candidates. It’s about their comfort level. It just seems that men and women both are supportive of their gender first.”

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Posted by Justin Thyme · Filed Under Hillary Clinton, News

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Men Don’t Like Hillary: Clinton is fighting an uphill battle for male votes

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