Romney gusta a las mujeres

The Boston Globe:

Over the course of Mitt Romney’s second presidential campaign, his advisers have repeatedly seen something in public and independent polls that was not true in his previous campaigns: he’s regularly winning a larger share of support among women than men.

“We’ve seen that difference for a while,’’ Neil Newhouse, Romney’s pollster, said last week after delivering a presentation in Washington on “Walmart Moms,’’ which he views as a key demographic in the upcoming election. “It may be that, to women, experience makes more of a difference. Experience, leadership - it’s the intangibles.’’

The small but persistent gender gap seems to have emerged because, women say, they appreciate Romney’s values, family story, business background - and, yes, his chiseled good looks - while being less interested in the ideological critiques that seem to be causing him more problems with male voters. It amounts to seeing him through a different lens.

“He is just a gentleman. He’s a good man, a good American family man,’’ Linda Thurlow, a 45-year-old stay-at-home mother from York, Maine, said as she prepared to take the ice at a local hockey rink here.

Romney’s strength with female voters - they support him by about five percentage points more than men do - was not something he saw in his 2002 campaign for governor nor his 2008 presidential run.

This time around, Romney’s campaign has significantly softened his image. He rarely wears a suit and tie and he downplays talk of social issues, such as opposition to abortion, and focuses on economic concerns. He often talks about his family - his son Tagg recently sent a video on Twitter of Romney tossing snowballs with the family - and his wife, Ann, has been a frequent presence on the stump.