On eve of final debate, ‘gender gap’ in choices near all-time high

If only women voted, Barack Obama would be on track for a landslide re-election, equaling or exceeding his margin of victory over John McCain in 2008. The President would be an overwhelming favourite in Ohio, Florida, Virginia and almost every other conventional swing state. The only question would be whether he could forge ahead into traditionally red states, like Georgia, Montana and Arizona.

If only men voted, Obama would be biding his time until a crushing defeat at the hands of Mitt Romney, who might win by a similar margin to the one Ronald Reagan had over Jimmy Carter in 1980. Only California, Illinois, Hawaii and a few states in the Northeast could be considered safely Democratic. Every other state would lean red, or would at least be a toss-up.

Although polls disagree on the exact magnitude of the gender gap (and a couple of recent ones seemed to show Romney eliminating the president's advantage with women voters), the consensus of surveys points to a large one this year — rivaling the biggest from past elections.

The gender gap is not new in US politics. Since 1972, when exit polls became widespread, men and women split their votes in three elections: 1996, 2000, and 2004. They came close to doing so on several other occasions. In 2008, for example, Obama won resoundingly among women, beating McCain by 13 points, but only won by a single point among men.

The biggest gender gap in exit polls came in 2000, when Al Gore won by 11 points among women, but George W Bush won by 9 points among men — a 20-point difference. This year looks very close to that.

Since the first debate in Denver, 10 high-quality national polls have reported a breakout of results between men and women.

The results were varied, with the gender gap ranging from 33 points (in a Zogby telephone poll for the Washington Times) to just 8 (in polls by Pew Research and by The Washington Post). On average, there was an 18-point gender gap, with Obama leading by an average of 9 points among women but trailing by 9 points among men.

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