Washington Post: "What Palin has Done is to Say that Women Wouldn't Necessarily Vote for a Democrat, and Might Vote For a Woman Republican"

This concession is in the following Washington Post article:Yet in New Hampshire, Ayotte's lead among women - while not as large as her lead among men - defies the usual trend. "What we're seeing is that Ayotte is able to eliminate that typical pro-Democratic gender gap. And the gender gap among men is magnified," Andrew Smith, director of the Survey Center at the University of New Hampshire said. In the most recent UNH polling, Ayotte leads Hodes by five points, 43 to 38, among women, and by 27 points, 58 to 31, among men. Smith credits Sarah Palin - who endorsed Ayotte in the primary - with helping shift a decades-old dynamic. Where suburban women were a core part of the Republican party in the 1960s and '70s, they shifted to the Democratic party in the 1980s and 90s, and have been a core part of the Democratic base ever since. "Republicans kind of wrote them off and didn't really bother to actively recruit women as voters because they figured they would vote Democrat anyway," Smith said. "What Palin has done is to say that women wouldn't necessarily vote for a Democrat, and might vote for a woman Republican."

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