Mitt Romney, Women Voters | featured news

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.

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.

"We've had the old Romney-Ryan plan before - the top-down, give wealthier folks more tax breaks and somehow that's going to trickle down - it didn't work, it led to this economic disaster that the president inherited. We tried that, it failed, the Obama plan is much better for North Carolina," Dem. Rep. Jennifer Weiss, of Wake County, said.

A boom in users on the social media site — and the fact that more than two-thirds are women — is attracting political messages to the site best known for recipes, crafts and I-want-that images. In political persuasion, as in marketing, "it's always the next big hot thing," says Zac Moffatt, digital director for Republican Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. "And it's kind of hot right now."

For Republicans and certain presidential nominee Mitt Romney, the best defense appears to be a good offense on issues and themes being pushed by President Barack Obama and Democrats.