Gender Mathematics Adding Up to Unusual Factor for Both Parties

To anyone who has ever tried to plan a vacation, pick a movie or choose between the rake and the hammock on a Saturday afternoon, it may not come as news that men and women occasionally disagree. In politics, this instinct has manifested itself most famously in the gender gap--the tendency of women to favor Democrats and men Republicans in presidential and congressional elections. Now the gender gap is migrating into new territory--the internal races for the parties' presidential nominations themselves.

Vice President Al Gore--despite (or maybe because of) his new status as an aspiring alpha male--is running much better with Democratic women than men in most polls. Texas Gov. George W. Bush, though his appeal is more balanced, also shows better with Republican women than men. Conversely, the two guys chasing the front-runners--former jock Bill Bradley and former Navy pilot John McCain--poll much better with their party's men. In a recent Dartmouth College survey in New Hampshire, Bradley ran 19 points better with men than women and McCain, 12 points; a new Times Poll there found Bradley and McCain both running 10 points better with men than women.

This is a more uncommon phenomenon than it might seem. No consistent gender gap emerged in Bill Clinton's race against Paul E. Tsongas for the 1992 Democratic nomination. Even polarizing Patrick J. Buchanan didn't generate much of a gender gap against Bob Dole in the 1996 GOP race. But this year it's reached the point where Gore is clinging to women's support like a life raft, and even Bush's advisors are bracing for a world where they rely on women's votes to survive a tilt toward McCain among men in early primaries.

Both broad and narrow factors explain the trend. Dartmouth political scientist Linda Fowler (who supervises the college's poll) notes that women tend to plug into political campaigns later than men; they may be supporting Bush and Gore in greater numbers now simply because, as the front-runners, they are better known. Fred Steeper, Bush's pollster, points to another broad explanation. "Men tend to be political risk-takers," he says, which makes them more willing to back a challenger--Bradley or McCain--over the better-known Gore and Bush.