A new battle of the sexes

Women prefer Mark Pryor and men prefer Tom Cotton.

The race that could decide control of the U.S. Senate may well come down to whether more votes are cast from Mars or Venus.

At present, women prefer Pryor by a slightly higher margin than men prefer Cotton. And the issues currently emerging are more important to women than men.

That’s according to polls. It explains why Pryor has inched ahead in the latest few. It also explains why Pryor suddenly confronts decidedly more encouraging prospects for November than were evident just three weeks ago when the rage was all that Cotton might coast on the red-state tide.

A little something is happening out there. Or a big something.

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In the Talk Business/Hendrix College poll conducted with computer calls on April 3, Pryor’s lead among women was 10 points and Cotton’s among men was seven points.

Pryor led the poll by three points, 45.5 to 42.5-men and women being about equally represented in the survey.

That is to say that the difference in the race at the moment, at least as demonstrated in that historically credible poll-and the sustaining difference in November, the Pryor campaign hopes-is the greater fervor for Pryor and his issues among women than that for Cotton and his issues among men.

First I’ll be general and then specific.

Generally, men prefer Cotton because he has a record of military service and is in favor of smaller government and deep spending reductions, including for Obamacare, which he disdains.

Men tend to profess a desire for greater independence and self-reliance, owing to chemical makeup and the fact that they’ve historically had greater independence and self-reliance than women.

Generally, women like Pryor because he seems more compassionately supportive of government aid for human needs and concerns, including, but not limited to, Obamacare.

It is possible that voter disdain for Obamacare in Arkansas has topped out. It also is possible that Cotton’s military service is, while a sterling biographical element, a matter now of universal voter identification.

It also seems possible that approximately everything that could be said of short-term consequence about government size and spending has been said.

That would leave Cotton a few points behind in the polls with all trumps played.

Meantime, consider the issues being talked about currently and likely to be talked about as we move to November.

One is that Cotton voted for Paul Ryan budgets to convert Medicare for persons now younger than 55 to a privatized, premium-assistance form of insurance-one that is widely believed to portend higher out-of-pocket costs for the elderly.

Women are more likely than men to be concerned about that, both by nature and practicality, the latter of which is that women tend to live longer than men and thus rely more on Medicare.

Another is that Cotton has voted to phase in the raising of the Social Security age of eligibility to 70. (See the gender-based analysis in the immediately preceding paragraph.)

Then there is the recent Democratic advancement of the paycheck fairness bill to make it harder for employers to get away with paying women less for the same or similar jobs.

Cotton joined most Republicans in opposing the measure on the basis that it contained provisions that will prove unfairly onerous for job creators and do no more to achieve gender pay equity than laws already on the books.

For that matter, Cotton was alone even in the state’s exclusively Republican delegation in the U.S. House of Representatives in opposing both the Democratic and Republican bills to renew the Violence Against Women Act to protect victims of domestic abuse.

Cotton said he opposed even the Republican version because of a lack of prosecutorial venue options in cases arising from Native American reservations.

Meantime, there is the looming potential for a ballot issue in Arkansas in November to raise the minimum wage less than is proposed federally. Pryor endorses that state initiative.

Polls show that a minimum-wage increase accrues to the Democrats’ advantage, especially among minorities and … you guessed it-women.

And this subject could hardly be addressed without mentioning a woman’s right to choose an abortion, a subject on which Pryor can be iffy but on which Cotton is not iffy at all, but extreme.

Cotton has favored federal proposals to grant “personhood” at point of conception and deny not only abortions thereafter, but a few forms of commonly practiced women’s contraception.

A pro-choice position in Arkansas is a loser. An anti-birth-control position is not, especially among … you guessed it-women.

So look around the dinner table this evening and take your own poll of this race. Count the women and men, I mean.

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John Brummett’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

Editorial, Pages 81 on 04/20/2014

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