From Seneca Falls to … Sarah Palin?

In recent years, however, women have consistently skewed to the Democrats. In 1992, many more women voted for Clinton (45 percent) than Bush (37 percent) or Perot (17 percent). In 1996, women flocked to Clinton, and most preferred Gore to Bush in 2000. In 2004, they slightly favored Kerry. In the simplest terms, the vote of women was significant in Clinton's victories, while men helped both Bushes to win. The votes of women remain important, however, especially because they are the majority of voters, says Susan Carroll of Rutgers. In 2004, 60.1 percent of women voted, compared with 56 percent of men. This means there are 9 million more female voters.

Before 1972, many women preferred voting for men. "When women first started organizing for the vote, they thought women would all vote the same, but they were disappointed," says Stephanie Coontz. That's true today, too. "I don't think there's anything in their DNA that would cause them to identify only with other women," she says. "They tend to vote for women of their own political party," says Karen O'Connor, founder and director of the Women and Politics Institute at American University in Washington, D.C. "If a woman thinks Roe is an important law, and wants equal pay for equal work, they tend to vote Democratic. They're not going to vote for a woman who has different stands on those issues because she's a woman." All things being equal between candidates, however, there is evidence to suggest that women are increasingly likely to support female candidates because they are women—if they believe there are too few women in positions of power. But gender remains only one consideration of many.

The possible payoffs for the Republican ticket of capturing undecided women are so great that even McCain is discovering—or trying to find—his inner Oprah. Working women and older women—"swing moms" that they believe might come from the Clinton camp—are precisely those the Republicans are seeking to target, not just by choosing Palin but by attempting to add warmth to McCain's image as well. In the past few weeks he has done interviews with Rachael Ray, People, Marie Claire and the women on "The View."

On the day McCain announced that Palin had been picked, a McCain senior adviser told NEWSWEEK that the campaign was hoping to attract women voters and exploit a "great opportunity" to pull in Clinton supporters. This might sound implausible—the two women disagree on almost every issue—but former Clinton strategist Mark Penn thinks McCain could succeed at picking off a slice of lower-income working women. He believes undecided women are critical: "The undecided here are primarily women—women over 35, hockey moms, soccer moms, active grannies. They really will ultimately decide the election."

Many women have rightly argued that it is insulting to assume they would simply switch votes from one woman to another just because she is a woman, despite what her policies or experience might be. The Obama campaign acknowledges that, overall, there has been a recent shift in the female vote toward McCain. But they believe it is a modest movement among middle-aged women voters, with kids, who live in suburban and rural areas, and that the shift is already reversing itself. There is much disagreement among the parties about whether Hillary supporters will in fact defect to McCain. Many pollsters are skeptical about this claim, and the polls are inconsistent. In the NEWSWEEK Poll, asked if Palin made them more likely to vote for McCain, 14 percent of Clinton supporters said yes. But since our previous poll, in July, the number of them who say they will vote for Obama rather than McCain has gone up by 7 percent.

Lynette Long, a therapist who is working with the McCain campaign, spoke as a former Clinton supporter at a McCain-Palin rally in Fairfax, Va., last Wednesday. While she is strongly pro-choice—her mother almost died of an illegal abortion—she said she does not believe that Roe v. Wade would really be threatened by a McCain win. She believes it is more important to take a stand for her gender than to vote on one issue. "The first issue for me is the blatant sexism and treatment of Hillary Clinton," she said.

The McCain camp claims to be surprised by the extent of Palin's success. She has generated enormous crowds—an estimated 12,000 at a rally in Colorado Springs, Colo., roughly 12 times the number McCain attracted at his solo events last month—although there have been questions about whether the campaign is exaggerating the crowd sizes. "We did expect some of this movement," says a senior McCain aide who declined to be named so as to discuss the state of the race more freely. "But she's had a greater impact on the battleground than we anticipated … Suddenly there are states that could have been in play that are not, like Montana and Georgia, and we're gaining in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. We never expected to get Obama-size crowds, that's not John McCain's audience, but here we are. I don't think any of us saw that coming."

It is unclear, however, how long this excitement will last and if it will translate into votes. There are some sobering, cautionary notes to be taken from history. Put simply, issues matter. Women may cheer on one of their own, but the economy is their primary concern. This is one thing political scientists and pollsters do all agree on. And it is certainly true in this election. Whether it's the Wal-Mart mothers and grandmas, the unmarried or the happily wed and over-50s, the economy ranks first for all female voters. In a recent Zogby poll, 65 percent of women included jobs and the economy as their top issues, compared with 47 percent of men. The war in Iraq and health care both came in at a distant second place. The NEWSWEEK Poll found the top three concerns of white women to be the economy, taxes and government spending, and the war in Iraq, with women more concerned about the war than the rest of the electorate. "Women are very change-oriented," says Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. "They turned against the war in Iraq before men did, and they were the first to say the economy was personally affecting their families."