in 2012, when president obama won a second term over republican challenger mitt romney, he did so with the help of a whole lot of women voters who provided a gender gap you could drive a truck through. president obama did ten points better among women in 2012 than he did among men. that is one of the largest gender gaps ever recorded in a presidential election. gender gap was so big and so decisive in 2012 that it caught the attention of republican leaders. those leaders pledged to be better about talking to and talking about women in the future. this, of course, was after a 2012 campaign season in which several prominent republican candidates made inflammatory and politically suicidal comments that involved women. most infamously, todd acikin s legitimate rape remark. multiple sessions supposedly to train republicen to en tans tor
so that is why we are seeing this be so resonant in races across the country, in conversations across the country. and i think it is going to be a motivating factor. we have seen the gender gap between republicans and democrats grow as birth control became part of the debate again. we saw historic gender gaps in 2012. i m sure that had a lot to do with putting aspirin between the knees and todd aiken and all of that. i think we will see it grow even more. and your point about the sort of importance of birth control was fascinating to look at the majority opinion yesterday and the dissent in which aledo, it is a religious freedom case. for ruth bader ginsberg she talks about how this is part of
the numbers with just democrats or single women or women who don t have a religious affiliation. that includes all of the weak. so that is why we are seeing this be so resonant in races across the country, in conversations across the country. and i think it is going to be a motivating factor. we have seen the gender gap between republicans and democrats grow as birth control became part of the debate again. we saw historic gender gaps in 2012. i m sure that had a lot to do with putting aspirin between the knees and todd aiken and all of that. i think we will see it grow even more. and your point about the sort of importance of birth control was fascinating to look at the majority opinion yesterday and the dissent in which aledo, it is a religious freedom case. for ruth bader ginsberg she talks about how this is part of the legislation to begin with and how important birth control is and why congress put it in
or single women or women who don t have a religious affiliation. that includes all of the weak. so that is why we are seeing this be so resonant in races across the country, in conversations across the country. and i think it is going to be a motivating factor. we have seen the gender gap between republicans and democrats grow as birth control became part of the debate again. we saw historic gender gaps in 2012. i m sure that had a lot to do with putting aspirin between the knees and todd aiken and all of that. i think we will see it grow even more. and your point about the sort of importance of birth control was fascinating to look at the majority opinion yesterday and the dissent in which aledo, it
debate right now on the nsa than the u.s. has that in decades. that s a development. you have to link it back to snowden. robert, the nsa is obviously going to have a huge impact on all sorts of political issues in 2014, but there will be other issues. i m trying to figure out where this country is going to go. we can look to a recent nbc/wsj poll, which points out there are significant gender gaps on all sorts of major policy issues. when you look at should congress be republican controlled, presidential approval, presidential trustworthiness, was the shutdown harmful, as well as obamacare, guns and minimum wage, there s all kinds of gaps. consistently, women are on the side of what democrats are about and men are on the side of what republicans are about. so what should the republicans do going into the midterms? should they try to pull more women to their side, or should they just double down on the men? what l we ve seen in the