Santorum Turning Off Women Voters?

 The Washington Post recently dubbed the Republican presidential campaign the "Vagina Monologues,"  suggesting that the party's candidates were spending too much time talking about reproductive rights and other values issues in ways unpopular with women.  With his opinions on birth control, abortion rights, health insurance, and women serving in the military, it appeared that Rick Santorum was doing substantial damage to his standing among women voters.  As Boston Globe columnist Margery Eagan put it after the Michigan primary:

Santorum lost Michigan because he lost women — by six points. He lost every category of women: single, married, old, young, working, stay-at-home. He lost women still having sex and grandmothers who used to have sex while committing the “grievous moral wrong,” as Santorum puts it, of using birth control.

Similar results occurred in Arizona, where Santorum lost among women voters by a mammoth margin, 17%. The data from yesterday's primaries seems to indicate that Santorum had just lost women in some parts of the country.  In Mississippi, Santorum out-polled Romney by 3% among women voters, and by 10% among married women voters.  In Alabama, Santorum won 8% more women than Romney.

Gallup also posted data yesterday that shows that Santorum's support among women voters closely tracks that of male voters:

 

Gallup's analysis:

Note that both lines have gone up and down since December. The big plunge in both lines came in and around the time of Santorum’s winning performance on Feb. 7 in voting in Minnesota, Missouri, and Colorado. The rise in the lines after that reflects Romney's recovery of his lead.

But, and this is the important point, note how closely the two lines -- one representing the Romney lead among men and the other representing the Romney lead among women -- track each other. The big tidal forces affecting Republican voters' choice for their party's nominee are affecting both men and women about equally. And, the closeness of the lines to one another shows us that Rick Santorum is not, as some have speculated, losing support disproportionately among women compared with his support among men.

So, no matter what comments and policy positions Santorum has taken in recent weeks relating to women’s issues, nothing seems to have affected his relative position among women in any way that it hasn’t affected his relative position among men.

But all this doesn't mean that Santorum won't have a gender gap in the general election.  Newt is in the race too, and he has undoubtedly been pulling away some female conservatives who are not happy with Santorum's attitude towards women's health and reproductive issues. 

More importantly, Santorum has been getting negative coverage on the issues in the press, but not from his opponents in the primaries.  If Santorum were to eke out the nomination, the stress on his past proclaimed attitudes towards women's rights will ramp up substantially.