2012 Presidential Election, Women Voters | featured news

Sorry, fellas, but President Barack Obama's re-election makes it official: Women can overrule men at the ballot box. For the first time in research dating to 1952, a presidential candidate whom men chose decisively - Republican Mitt Romney - lost. More women voted for the other guy.

With the presidential contest in Virginia teetering on a knife's edge, Mitt Romney is counting on the economic concerns of suburban women to lock up a state that's almost a must-carry for him. Joanie Smerdzinski, 34, is one of them. She voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and still finds him more likable than his Republican rival. "I mean, would I want to hang out with Romney? No," said the political independent, who also disagrees with Romney's opposition to same-sex marriage.

What gender gap? Less than two weeks out from Election Day, Republican Mitt Romney has erased President Barack Obama's 16-point advantage among women, a new Associated Press-GfK poll shows. And the president, in turn, has largely eliminated Romney's edge among men.

President Obama's campaign is trying to tie Republican rival Mitt Romney to embattled candidate's comments about rape. In a new video, the Obama campaign asks, "Mitt Romney's solution to extremism against women? Promote the extremists."

In a boisterous speech in Fairfax, Va., today, President Obama made a renewed push for support among female voters, reiterating his commitment to women's health care and introducing a new diagnosis for what he cast as Mitt Romney's "backtracking" and "sidestepping" on issues like contraception and abortion: "Romnesia."

President Obama touts antidiscrimination legislation and attacks Mitt Romney for targeting Planned Parenthood, while Romney says women have suffered under Obama... Picking up where their contentious debate left off, President Obama and challenger Mitt Romney battled Wednesday for the support of female voters, underscoring their potentially decisive role in settling the fiercely competitive race.

President Barack Obama on Monday sought to woo women voters at a taping of the daytime talk show "The View," by flirting with his wife and bearing gifts for the hosts, but he could not escape tough questions on the economy that have dominated the election.

The patchwork quilt that is the Democratic Party base -- women, Latinos, African-Americans -- will be on full display at Tuesday night's opening session of the national party convention. The highlight will be a prime-time address by First Lady Michelle Obama who is expected to play the same role Ann Romney did one week ago at the GOP gathering in Tampa: eschewing hard-edged politics for a soft-focus testimonial to her husband.

Women voters care most about the economy and jobs. But with a critical caveat: nine out of 10 women say that a candidate must "understand women." To do that requires an acknowledgment of two things: that women's economic security -- by almost every measure -- still lags behind that of male counterparts and that their economic security is inextricably tied to their ability to control their health, including reproductive choices. And on those points, no illusions and tradesman's tricks can obscure the fact that the GOP agenda fails the test.

With the Republican National Convention at last in full-throated roar, nominee Mitt Romney and his team reached out Wednesday to connect with critical voting groups - veterans, Hispanics and women - while gleefully mocking the man he is out to defeat in November.