Widening Gender Gap Helps to Give GOP Election Edge : Politics: Democrats are facing problems attracting male voters, who are turning their anger with Clinton to party.

WASHINGTON —  If there’s a secret ingredient in the high octane political mix fueling the Republican advance this fall, it might be testosterone.

In races across the country, Democrats are facing substantial--in some instances enormous--deficits among male voters. Indeed, in many statewide elections, the ability to attract men may be the principal agent of natural selection between Democrats who survive in this autumn of their discontent and those who are swept away.

The problem appears especially intractable for several Democratic women in high-profile races--such as Texas Gov. Ann Richards--but it is hardly unique to them. Democrats in every region of the country, of every ideological persuasion, are having man trouble. “Men have turned away from Bill Clinton,” said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, “and now they are turning away from the (Democratic) party.”

Republican success with men has always been the flip side of the more highly touted gender gap: the tilt toward Democrats among women that first emerged during the Ronald Reagan era. But this year, the Republican advantage among men has opened to levels that are striking even by recent political history. And in most races it is too large for Democrats to overcome even by running well among women, who typically constitute just over half of all voters. “This year, what’s really problematic is (that) the deficit with men is so great that the advantage with women can’t make it up,” Lake said.

Disaffection with Clinton, sympathy for hard-line Republican appeals on issues like crime and taxes and greater resistance to activist government have combined to move men sharply toward the GOP this fall, pollsters in both parties said. “Men tend to express themselves in anger at the President; women express themselves in fear about the future,” said GOP pollster Frank Luntz. “And anger tends to produce a much more Republican vote.”

That trend is apparent in both national numbers and individual races. In 1992, women were somewhat more disposed than men to support Democratic congressional candidates but the differences were modest: 56% of women and 51% of men voted Democrat for Congress that year, according to a Los Angeles Times exit poll. Gallup Organization Inc. surveys in 1986 and 1988 found similarly slim differences between men and women in their congressional voting preferences.

But now a chasm has opened between the generic voting intentions of men and women in the congressional campaign. In a Times Poll conducted last week, women preferred Democratic over Republican congressional candidates by six percentage points. Men, in sharp contrast, preferred Republicans over Democrats by 18 percentage points.

“These are the biggest gender gaps in history,” said Stanley B. Greenberg, Clinton’s pollster. “It is big, big.”

Big enough to affect not only contests involving liberal Democrats, who have often had trouble with men, but more moderate and conservative party members with political profiles that ordinarily might appeal to male voters.

For liberals, trouble with men is widespread. The most recent public poll in Ohio shows Democratic senatorial nominee Joel Hyatt narrowly leading Republican Lt. Gov. Mike DeWine among women; but DeWine holds a solid 10-point overall advantage because he is crushing Hyatt by 17 points among men. In New York, Gov. Mario M. Cuomo’s comfortable lead among women voters is more than offset by a 16-point deficit among men, producing a statistical dead heat in his race against Republican George Pataki, according to a new poll by the Marist Institute of Public Opinion.

Moderate Democrats are not faring any better. Oklahoma Rep. Dave McCurdy, the Democratic senatorial nominee against conservative Republican Jim Inhofe, wears cowboy boots, touts his tough line against welfare recipients and stresses his support for the military installations in the state. He even has run a television ad showing him riding in a pickup truck with a shotgun on the rack behind him. No matter: While McCurdy still leads among women, Inhofe has surged into the lead by running up a 15-point advantage among men, according to the most recent public survey.

Likewise, moderate Democratic Rep. Jim Cooper is facing a 15-point gap among men with folksy Republican lawyer/actor Fred Thompson in their Tennessee Senate race; in Arizona, Republican Rep. Jon Kyl leads Democratic Rep. Sam Coppersmith by 25 points among men, according to a survey completed last week. Both Democrats trail overall.

For women Democratic candidates in the most high-profile races, deficits with men are a common condition. In the California gubernatorial race, the phenomenon is actually relatively muted. The most recent Times Poll found Gov. Pete Wilson leading Democrat Kathleen Brown by 9 points among men, while women are splitting evenly. But both Bonnie Campbell, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee in Iowa, and Ann Wynia, the Democratic senatorial nominee in Minnesota, faced double-digit disadvantages among men in recent surveys. Both narrowly trail overall.

No race involving a woman appears more defined by gender than Texas Gov. Richards’ struggle against Republican George W. Bush, the former President’s son. The most recent Texas Poll showed the race a dead heat. But Richards--a moderate who hunts, speaks a spicy good ol’ gal Texas patois and has built prisons the way pharaohs built pyramids--leads Bush by 12 points among women, and trails by 17 points among men. To Candace Windel, the Texas Poll director, the race reduces to a simple calculus: “If more boys show up to vote than girls, he wins. If more girls show up to vote than boys, she wins,” she told reporters.

Notwithstanding the difficulties that Democratic women are having attracting male votes, the key factor in the gender polarization this fall appears to be the party, not the sex, of the candidates. Democratic men like McCurdy and Hyatt are having no more success with male voters than Democratic women like Richards and Wynia. And Republican women like Senate nominee Olympia J. Snowe in Maine and Maryland gubernatorial nominee Ellen Sauerbrey lead among men in their races.

Sauerbrey still trails in her contest, though, because Democratic opponent Parris Glendening has kept her to a small advantage among men, while exploiting the flip side of the gender gap to amass a double-digit lead among women. That’s a common profile for Democrats--of both genders--running well this fall: Sens. Edward M. Kennedy in Massachusetts and Dianne Feinstein in California, for instance, have regained the leads in their contests by battling back to virtual dead-heats among men, while running up substantial leads with women.

With those exceptions, why are so many Democrats running aground with men this fall? Analysts cite three principal reasons.

Gender polarization over President Clinton. One of Clinton’s most striking successes in 1992 was overcoming the huge disadvantages among men that largely sank Walter F. Mondale and Michael S. Dukakis during the 1980s. With the help of Ross Perot--who siphoned off a fifth of men--Clinton narrowly carried the male vote in 1992.

But two years into his presidency, attitudes toward Clinton are again dividing along gender lines. In the latest Times Poll, women essentially split on Clinton’s job performance, giving him a 48% negative to 46% positive grade. Men were considerably more negative, with 53% disapproving of Clinton’s performance and just 41% approving.

Political analysts said that Clinton has two distinct problems with men. With older men, said Republican pollster Bill McInturff, issues like gays in the military, Clinton’s avoidance of military service during Vietnam and a perception of irresolution in foreign affairs have produced a sense “that Bill Clinton in some broad aggregate ways is not representing the values they want represented in the presidency.”

With younger men--particularly those without college educations whose incomes remain stagnant or declining--the President is being buffeted by the same economic discontent that moved those voters away from Bush and toward Clinton and Perot just two years ago. “If there was a Republican President now, I have no doubt they would be angry at him,” Greenberg said.

The Perot factor: As the continuing disillusionment among young men suggests, the flight away from Democrats by men reflects another phenomenon: the souring of 1992 Perot voters--who were disproportionately male--on Clinton and Congress. One result in the latest Times Poll underscores that trend: Fully 62% of independent men disapproved of Clinton’s job performance.

The environment: The issues at the head of the line this fall tend to both exacerbate gender differences and move men toward the GOP, operatives in both parties agreed. Hard-line Republican positions on crime and welfare--emphasizing punishment over prevention and strict time limits for welfare recipients--cut more deeply with men than women. So does the core GOP economic agenda of tax cuts and balancing the federal budget. Even California’s Proposition 187--which would deny most public services to illegal immigrants and has been strongly backed by Republicans in the state--draws much more support from men than women, according to the latest Times Poll.

Times Poll Director John Brennan and researcher D’Jamila Salem contributed to this story from Los Angeles.

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