http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/campaigns/obama-gains-among-women-amid-improving-economy-new-talk-about-their-access-to-birth-control/2012/02/27/gIQADMSOeR_story.html
Washington — It’s looking like President Barack Obama may be back in the good graces of women.
His support dropped among this critical constituency just before the new year began and the presidential campaign got under way in earnest. But his standing with female voters is strengthening, polls show, as the economy improves and social issues, including birth control, become a bigger part of the nation’s political discourse.
“Republicans are making a big mistake with this contraception talk, and I’m pretty sure that they are giving (the election) to Obama,” says Patricia Speyerer, 87, of McComb, Miss., a GOP-leaning independent. “It’s a stupid thing.”
The recent furor over whether religious employers should be forced to pay for their workers’ contraception is certainly a factor but hardly the only reason for women warming up to Obama again after turning away from him late last year.
An Associated Press-GfK poll suggests women also are giving the president more credit than men are for the country’s economic turnaround.
Among women, his approval ratings on handling the economy and unemployment have jumped by 10 percentage points since December. Back then, a wide swath of Americans expressed anxiety over the nation’s slow climb out of recession and anger at a government that couldn’t agree on steps to speed things up.
Since then, the unemployment rate has kept declining, and Obama hasn’t been shy about trumpeting it, and analysts say that drop may have resonated particularly with women.
For Obama, there is no more crucial constituency than women. They make up a majority of voters in presidential elections, and a bit more of them identify with his party. He would not be president today without topping Republican John McCain in that group in 2008. And Republicans would need to win a sizable share — more than about 40 percent — of female voters to beat him.