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In interviews across the country, women told TIME that this election matters more than past ones, even as the intensity of the issues pulls them in different directions. Cyrene Ajluni, a lifelong Republican in Johnston, Iowa, who has two teenage children and supported Bush enthusiastically four years ago, has switched sides because, among other reasons, she fears a draft. Kassie Auker, a college student in Cleveland, Ohio, likes Bush's tax policies but thinks gay marriage should be left up to the states. Minneapolis, Minn., secretary Sandy Eischen voted for Bush four years ago, but is now undecided because her husband has been laid off, and, she says, "when you become one of the statistics, you start rethinking things." Susie Cho, a high school teacher turned law student in Westfield, N.J., usually votes for Democrats but worries about changing leaders in the middle of a war. "Perhaps changing would slow down diplomacy," she says. "Perhaps Kerry would be perceived as weak where we need him to be strong." Lisa Umstead, a day-care receptionist from Philadelphia, usually votes Democratic but this year is inclined to adhere to the housekeeping principle, You make a mess, you clean it up. "Bush started this [war]. Maybe he should finish it," she says.
The fact is that "women move around [politically] more than men," says Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg, and with issues so pressing, many have said they want to hear more specifics, especially from Kerry. Greenberg doesn't think security issues are Kerry's problem. She thinks he began to fall behind when he was talking more about Vietnam and Iraq than about Social Security and health care. But other pollsters see Kerry's handicap as being less about policy than personality. "Where Bush is beating Kerry among men and women alike is on leadership," says Carroll Doherty, an editor at the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. In a TIME poll taken Sept. 21-23, when voters were asked which candidate would provide leadership in difficult times, 60% of men and 53% of women chose Bush.
The Bush camp has always counted on voters generally and women particularly to prefer the President's character even if they question his choices. "They may agree or disagree with him," says a Bush official, "but women like his steadiness, which is why you might notice we've used the word steady a few times." Ask the Bush campaign to talk about the women's vote, and they sound as if they were channeling Dr. Phil. "Women don't like a man who can't commit," says a senior Bush adviser, finding yet another way to talk about Kerry's winding positions. Another senior Republican official likes to speculate along these lines: "Kerry seems like a depressed man trying to act cheerful. That would make a lot of women feel compassion but not want to be led by him. Kerry is the weirdo first husband you married in college when you were an art major. Bush is the solid second husband who saved you, helped you raise kids and taught you golf."