April 02, 2012 05:26 PM UTC

Ken Buck Knows How This Story Ends

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• by: Colorado Pols

Our friends at the Washington Post’s “The Fix” blog report:

In…12 states – Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin – included in the Gallup/USA Today survey, Obama leads Romney 51 percent to 42 percent.

While that lead is eye-opening in its own right – most people believe that the race between Obama and Romney will be very close – it’s all the more remarkable given that, just a month ago, Romney held a two-point edge in these same 12 states.

And even a cursory look inside the numbers explains why Obama has reclaimed the lead; it’s women. [Pols emphasis] In mid-February, Obama took less than half of the vote from women under 50 years old. Now he wins more than 60 percent of them. (Obama is ahead of Romney among all women by 18 points.)

“Romney certainly didn’t create the gender gap, but the heir apparent will inherit what is no doubt a challenge,” acknowledged Tracey Schmitt, a former spokeswoman at the Republican National Committee. “The general election will provide the campaign an opportunity to address the divide.”

On a Sunday morning early in October of 2010, we sat down and wrote a post we called “The Dynamics of Buck’s ‘Woman Problem.'” In this post, we described a growing shift of support away from GOP U.S. Senate candidate Ken Buck toward his appointed Democratic opponent Michael Bennet among women voters–even as the conventional wisdom felt increasingly certain that Buck was “pulling away” and solidifying his lead. In the end, pollsters were substantially underweighting the negative motivational response by women to Buck’s strident anti-abortion and (initially) pro-“personhood” rhetoric, which as it turns out was one of few factors in 2010 that managed to motivate Democratic voters at all.

Ever since Buck’s narrow loss to Bennet in 2010, a loss directly attributable to Buck’s massive loss of support among women in September and October–but originating in positions taken during the primary–we have repeatedly warned that any lurch to the right on social issues, women’s and reproductive rights in particular, in the GOP presidential primary would prove similarly disastrous to whoever their eventual nominee is. “Etch-a-Sketch” delusions among groupthinking staffers prove our point about the harm that’s already been done.

Who wants to tell us this isn’t going down exactly as we warned?