Where The Boys Aren't

Surveying the latest Presidential poll numbers for my home state of Alabama, I have to say the net result is not surprising. McCain still has an overwhelming lead, but one detail, buried underneath the rest of the data, does jump out at me.

While the Republican [McCain] has a commanding 66% to 27% lead among men, the two candidates are essentially even among women.

This is quite a change from elections prior, when George W. Bush had a substantial lead among women voters. While it is true that a majority of women are Democrats, just by default, it's interesting to see how evenly split they are even in this conservative state. I'm not going to postulate much in depth about what this means, nor do I care to coin a cute saying to be co-opted by the media and lauded as the next great metaphor to describe the latest phenomenon in the race, but one has to admit this is an interesting fact to observe.

I believe there is still a significant faction of men here who have been watching too many John Ford movies starring John Wayne, the very same sort who see Democrats as weak-willed pansies. These are probably the very same who rant about how the role of women in society, be it in the police force, politics, or fill in the blank has contributed to the inefficiency and incompetence of just about anything they can think of. Fortunately, these are a dying breed, and even though change is notoriously slow to come to this region, it is in a heavy state of transition and will remain so for the foreseeable future.