Elections 2004 - The Women's Vote

3 P.M. EDT

MS. NISBET: Good afternoon. I'd like to welcome Ethel Klein, a longtime campaign strategist and pollster. She is also the president of EDK Associates and she's here today to talk to us about the upcoming elections and the women's vote, as well as gender politics overall. So we really are happy to have her.

And as always, after her opening remarks, if you could please state your name and affiliation, that's really important because we are transcribing this and it will be on the FPC website following this roundtable.
Thank you.

MS. KLEIN: Excuse me. I had them hand out a second one. You have this one, right, with The Washington Post? There's a -- perfect, thank you. Thank you so much. Perfect.

So I want to first talk about this historically and then talk about it in how it's being discussed, it being the women's vote -- okay? -- and how it's being discussed today because we have some new developments this year for the first time.

So let me start by saying the women's vote started in 1980. Before that, every poll showed that women and men voted pretty much the same. And, in fact, there was, because it also the time of, you know, the last days of the ERA campaign, journalists were starting to talk about whether, you know, this was going to be the downfall of Reagan, that women had more problems with him, that maybe women's rights are suddenly going to become an issue this time.

And so they started asking political scientists, and at that time I was getting a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, and I was one of them that they asked, "Would there be a women's vote?" And I said no, and thank God I didn't get quoted. But I said no, as did almost every other political scientist insist there would be a no because for decades polling had shown that men and women don't vote in any different way.

And so when the women's vote emerged, the question became: Why, and why now? And the answer is that Ronald Reagan signified a very big change in American politics that even Richard Nixon did not signify, which is he really ran on the kind of New Deal versus Fair Deal, he ran on where the government ought to be activist, and he really was the first President in a long time who said government is the problem, not the solution.

And one of the big differences in gender is that -- and it's a difference in degree, not kind. I don't want you to think women are socialists and men are Tories, you know. But women really do believe that government needs to help people help themselves. In general, women are much more supportive of government programs than are men. And they are much more supportive of sort of humanitarian kinds of policies that really say we're all in this together.

Now, in those days when I was flip and young, I used to say that the reason for that is that men are used to believing that they do it on their own and women know they don't, but there really was a very strong ideological feeling that what was wrong with this country was we were keeping -- we were enabling people to be dependent and that people should just be allowed to do it on their own. There was a political Darwinism arising and men really, you know, believed in that much more than women did.

The other big issue which got a lot of press at the time was nuclear disarmament, and people really felt that one of the major reasons that women didn't support Reagan was that they were the peace vote, that they're anti-militarists, they're isolationists, they're historically anytime you look at when the United States is looking at being aggressive in the world scene, women are nervous about that and they pull back.

And these two themes have pretty much been the defining issue about what the gender gap is about: the role of government domestically and the role of government internationally. Women consistently will tell you on polls, although the majority of men will tell you the same, is they don't want us to be the world's policemen. They will consistently be more supportive of, you know, disarmament, anti-nuclear treaties, whatever you say about it.

And, you know, this was initially reported as feeding into a real stereotypic view of women; that is, they're the volunteers, they're the caregivers, they're the ones who care about the poor, and they're also the pacifists, the ones concerned about violence. And so I'd say through the Reagan years that was the characterization of the women's vote.

And then came 1988, where, up until August in the 1988 presidential race, the Democratic candidate, Michael Dukakis, was defeating the first George Bush by 17 points and consistently ahead in the polls, with a large gender gap. But Bush was not seen as a warmonger. He was a multilateralist. He was seen as being really a diplomat, very much believing in, you know, trade agreements and international agreements. And so the peace issue wasn't a very strong issue at that point in time. The Reagan Administration had moved towards dismantling the arms race, we were moving towards a much better relationship with the Soviet Union at the time, and so the kind of Cold War was really ending, and so why was there still a women's vote if it's not about peace?

There was still the role of government, but Bush, Sr., was not as aggressively anti-government as Ronald Reagan had been. The Reagan cohort was losing in the congressional races, the Contract on America was yet to come, so -- I apologize. The Contract for America was yet to come. And so you had this sense of what was it about, and it was the first time that people started saying, well, maybe women are for all these government programs and an activist government not only because they tend to be kinder, gentler species, which they may or may not be -- okay, because they actually are the beneficiaries of many of these programs, that they actually tend to be the poor, the disadvantaged. They tend to be the people who are trying to make it on their own, working extremely hard, playing by the rules and not getting anywhere.

And so there became a much more economic analysis of the women's vote. And what you were finding was that while the general debate throughout most of the election, until the very end, Bush, Sr., really insisted that the economy was improving, things were going well and that the recovery was in place because all the major economic indicators were in that direction; and Michael Dukakis, that he lived on Main Street, he knew the price of milk, he knew what it cost to mow your lawn, and he really campaigned on, "It's the economy, stupid," although he didn't do as good a job as Clinton and lost it once he walked into that tank with the little hat.

But all the gender gap data showed that women early on said the economy was in bad shape. They were voting their economic beliefs or their view of the economy. And it wasn't until the very end when they could not believe that Dukakis could be a head of state, they just, as much as they thought that Bush was wrong on the economy, you know, that in the end you vote on character, and issues are a window on character.

But in the end, Dukakis' character, one, because the tank thing and, more importantly, Willie Horton, followed by when they asked him what would you do if your wife was raped and you gave the most policy wonk answer in the world, what he showed then was he was out of touch with women like themselves. Because the thing that women worry unconsciously, the most unconscious fear that most women worry about, is the fear of violence, sexual violence in particular. And every time they go into a parking lot late at night, they are reminded of that fear. It's a latent fear and you can become manifest like that.

And so the women's vote -- there actually was a women's vote for Dukakis, not that it mattered, because George Bush won resoundingly. But when you interviewed women in the end why they changed their mind, they said we thought the economy was extremely important, but in the end security was important and we didn't trust this man to handle national security and our safety.

And so what the Democrats discovered was that crime was actually a women's issue, that women are much more worried about being victims of crime than they had been in the past, and that you have to look at security in a lot of ways. There's economic security, there's international security and there's personal security, and those are the three dimensions that I want to talk to you about in this election.

So then we got the Clinton Presidency and Clinton had gender gaps and Clinton won twice, but he also won with the majority of men's votes, so the fact that more women voted for Clinton didn't matter because he won. So the gender gap will really be critical in races where the women's vote makes the margin of difference, and the expectation is, is that if George Bush wins this time -- I mean, if John Kerry wins this time, it will be on women's votes.

Now, I want you to know every single election, this is what I say -- if so-and-so wins this time it will be on women's votes -- and then they don't win, so I personally think the women's vote is important whether it gives you the margin of error or not, more because of who they are than the fact that they're women. But I want to come back to that.

But this may be the long-awaited election where women will give the margin of victory to the wining candidate. The reason it's been kept alive is that in Senate races since 1980 it's made the margin of difference in a large number of Senate races, especially during the '80s. It's attributed for stopping the Republican realignment, that there was a major move towards Republicans winning and it was really the women's vote who stopped that from happening. And I have some data on that, but not here, if you're ever interested.

But now we get to Al Gore and George Bush, and in 2000 there was a huge women's vote outside the South. Overall, there was a women's vote and the data will show you that more women voted for Al Gore than voted for Bush, and it's probably what gave him the margin of victory in the electoral votes, and let me tell you why. There are estimates between 4 to 6 million more women voters than men voters, so that when you talk about the women's vote, they're anywhere between 52 and 53 percent of the electorate. So getting more of women's votes means you're getting more and more voters, and that's the margin of victory. If they split -- if, you know, men and women split equally, the candidate with the women's vote will win because there's more women voters.

That's historically been, unfortunately for men, they die younger than women, although we're catching up, I tell you. Women are beginning to die of male diseases, so the quality will prevail and we'll all die at a younger age. So right now, women outlive men. They have a longer life expectancy. And turnout is highest amongst older voters. So they are disproportionately powerful at this point in time. Older voters are frequent voters, they turn out, they take stuff seriously, and some of them actually give money, some of them participate and donate their time.

So they are a much coveted group and they are disproportionately female. And they have historically been disproportionately Democrat, as -- but you know, every four years, 12 percent of the electorate is replaced, so that's becoming less true. And that's important to remember because, increasingly, older voters are becoming more independent and possibly more Republican as kind of the Depression generation is being replaced, and as the boomers are coming in they're not predominantly Democratic, so that you're getting a real change in what one of the sources of the gender gap is, which is older women.

But in the South, you have almost no gender gap, with the exception of Florida, which some people don't consider the South. And that's part of the realignment. In the rest of the country, parties are becoming less important. In the South, parties have become more important. So there's a different dynamic going on. And so if the electoral votes were counted, as opposed to the Electoral College votes, then Al Gore would have won on the women's vote because it was a very sharp -- very, very narrow, rather, margin, and that was a disproportionate number of women who voted who supported him over Bush.

So now we're at 2004 and there are two -- there are three stories now, in the press right now. One is the gender gap is alive and well because the undecided voters are women. The second story is there is no gender gap, it's a marriage gap. Okay? So if it's you're married, single, and it's married people versus unmarried people. And the third is it's an education gap, and to the extent that gender shows up, it's -- women fall in one end or another in how educated they are.

And so I want take you through those and then let's start with where the vote is today. So the first thing I wanted to show you about is this lovely little -- the top is Washington Post, which is as of yesterday, that they give their data at 5 o'clock, so that's the latest Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll. And the bottom one is Zogby, and he comes out at 8 o'clock in the morning. Okay?

So if you look at the Washington Post, this looks an awful lot like 2000. Okay? And that is a closing of the gender gap in some sense because most times when you find the gender gap -- well, it's a 5 percent gap here, but you really do find men really rejecting Kerry and women really rejecting Bush. We've seen these numbers being huge, a 10 percent difference.

But now you see a really close split, and the reason you have Kerry slightly ahead is largely because there are more women than men. And let me tell you two things. Now, if you look at Zogby, there is no difference. In fact, this election is the first time I've ever seen, since 1980 -- I mean, this is statistically tied. I mean, this makes no difference. I want you to know, these numbers are the same in both these polls.

But anytime I see 47 percent of women voting for Bush and 46 voting for Kerry, I go, I've never seen anything like this. It just boggles my mind, not because I may not like it, but because I've never seen numbers like this. I've seen them much more like the Washington Post up there.

And now let's talk about what's the biggest difference between these two polls. The first one is registered voters, and the second one is likely voters. Now, the big question about this election and all the differences between the polls, you're going to hear people talking about how do you measure likely voters.

Well, one way you measure them is you ask people, "How likely are you to vote?" Now, the problem is that they lie to pollsters. If you're answering a poll, first of all, you lie that you're registered, because when we poll people right now at the heat of a presidential campaign, 90 percent of Americans say they're registered to vote. They're not. Okay?

Second, once they tell you they're registered, you ask them, "How likely are you to vote?" And they say, "Oh, I'm certain." Eighty-five percent will tell you they're absolutely certain that they're going to vote. Another 10 percent say, "I'm almost positive. I'm not certain, but I'm almost positive." So that's 95 percent of people saying I'm really going to vote this time.

So most media outlets and academic institutions don't trust those questions. They really want to know if you're going to vote. So they have a formula. Let me tell you one of the questions that they ask you to determine whether you're a likely voter or not; that is, "Did you vote last time?"

Because, usually, first time registrants don't vote. Young people don't vote. The promise of the college vote and the young professional vote has been there since MTV did "Rock the Vote," which it's now doing for like its fifth year or something. I don't know. And every year we go, this is the year it's going to happen, you know, like, just the way every year I say, this is the year the gender gap's going to elect the American President, and every year it hasn't happened with the young voters.

But people are saying there is more excitement now, there is unbelievable stuff going on around there, and that it's true with everyone. These polls are showing people think the stakes are much higher this election than any other election in their life. Now, if you're 18, 19, 20 years old, this is the only election in your life. But so, one of the things to watch on election night is what's happening with these young voters.

Harvard released a study about a week ago, of young voters, college students. They're disproportionately for Kerry, and among them the women are even more for Kerry than the men. If these Kerry voters really do turn out, then these polls will be wrong because they don't mention them, especially the Zogby polls that measure likely voters. And I'm a big Zogby fan, you know. He's the been the one to get it right more than anybody else. That's the only reason I give his numbers.

You know, I think The Washington Post numbers, which are just registered voters, may be closer now because of the way we measure likely voters, but we don't know that, you know, in the past these kids -- I apologize because I've gotten so much older, I think of them as kids -- they haven't shown up.

They've been excited, you know. Now there has been more commercialization around this, you know. Patagonia has gotten in on this. I mean, every store you go to now -- it's not just MTV and a couple -- it's been a massive cause-oriented campaign for youth that has come out of the corporate sector.

So there's a lot of excitement around this, and the Dean dating service really helped get lots of young people into politics and those Dean youth have stayed active; they didn't turn off. And so, there is a lot of possibilities here. But if the past is the best predictor of the future, then some people are going to be disappointed. But, you know, the Red Sox won the World Series, so I'm not making any bets on this.

Okay. So next I want to take you to the married, single, divorced, widowed, separated and together. In general, there are minor gender gaps amongst married, single, divorced, widowed, separated and together people. Together people are about 1.2 people in this poll. I want you to know the "and" is very small. Those are people who are living together for a long time but not married. But if you look at the gender gap amongst married people, it's pretty small and it's consistently been small and it's been small in a lot of elections.

But if you look at the gender gap among single, divorced, widowed, separated, it's pretty big and single men are more likely to support the Democrat than married men, and single women, which I combine single, divorced, widowed, separated as a group, unmarried women, are more likely to support Democrats than married women. So this is a division. And so, it's really about being married.

So it is and it isn't. Part of it is it's an economic vote and that if you're married, you're more economically secure than if you're not married. And the other is when you think of singles, most people think of young singles. And that's accurate when you think of men because men are not as widowed as much as women are. This is, again, they die sooner and women live longer, and divorced men remarry at a much higher rate than divorced women, so that when you think of single men, you really are thinking of a relatively homogeneous group who -- many of whom plan to be married soon, not as soon as their mothers would like, but soon.

When you think of single women, you really aren't talking about a very broad category, and 60 percent of singles are women and they tend to be largely older or divorced, widowed and separated, rather than not yet married or, you know, because if you're under the median age of first marriage the fact that you're single isn't -- doesn't have the same consequences.

And you will find that for these unmarried women, it's the economy that's driving this election. It's very hard to make it now, you know, and one of the dramatic changes that has happened that came out in the last economic indicator is that, you know, one of the things about having low-paying and not very good benefit jobs is that when there is a recession or a slowdown, you don't get fired because there is not -- they're not going to save that much money. And this is the first time, so women's jobs are often seen as recession-proof. Women actually gain jobs during depressions and recessions because it's a so much cheaper labor force, so that they fire men and hire women at cheaper wages and no benefits to replace them.

But this is the first time that women's unemployment rate, layoff rates, are close to men's, that we're cutting further and further down so that women are actually starting to lose jobs. And there is an economist, Heidi Hartman, who's documented this fairly well and I can get you in touch with her or a website with her information if you're interested. But this is dramatic in the sense that it's a real sign of just how bad things are for women.

You know, we often say women are the ones without health insurance disproportionately; women are the ones who don't have family leave or paid leave or they're also the ones who don't have pension plans. And so if they're the lone provider, they're increasingly fragile and they have often been the canary in the coalmine of where the economy is going. And so when someone says, well, you know, we're picking up on jobs, the economy is getting better, things are getting better, it's not happening in the jobs they're in, it's not happening in their lives, and that the fact that it's getting worse means that for those women, this is being driven by the economy.

So I think when you hear about the marriage gap, it is still a gender gap because the unmarried are disproportionately women, and also they're increasingly every election a larger part of the electorate because more women are staying single much longer and the divorce rate has stabilized but it's stabilized at a pretty constant rate, and unfortunately men are dying, so we see this as the economically vulnerable group continues to be disproportionately women.

Now I want to talk about the education gap. The curious thing about the education gap is that it's working in the opposite direction of what you'd expect. Kerry is the one who wants to do away with the Bush tax cuts for people in the higher end of the income bracket. They're supporting Kerry in huge numbers. They are not voting for Bush.

Kerry is the one who talks about stopping outsourcing and talks about giving tax cuts to working and middle income and low income people. But on the lower end of middle income and low income people, they're going disproportionately to Bush. So if it's the economy, people -- a large number of people are not voting their economic interest and it's breaking down by education. The more educated you are, the more you are a Kerry supporter; and the less educated you are, the more you are a Bush supporter.

This is a pretty new trend because, in the past, less education meant you voted for the Democrat and more education meant you voted for the Republican. And people have just started seeing this. See, it's emerging in these new polls coming out that we're now suddenly having daily polls which we never had before.

And so I'm not sure if it's true or not, but I will tell you the Los Angeles Times just did a big poll that they released about two or three days ago. It's on their website. You can go get it. And their explanation for this is this is the culture war finally coming home, that this election is really about more than just Iraq, terrorism and the economy, which are the three issues that everybody tells you are most important; but it's also about abortion, gay rights and religion; that the big divisions in this elections are, do you live in the inner city or do you live in rural America in the suburbs; this election is about, do you have a traditional view of life or do you have a nontraditional view, do you go to church a lot or do you not go to church a lot?

Kerry voters may be religious but they're not regular churchgoers. Bush voters are regular churchgoers, predominantly fundamentalists. Kerry voters are highly educated, pro-choice -- they're not so much pro-gay marriage but they're pro-union, and they believe that there needs to be a separation of church and state. Bush voters -- these are the hardcore -- they believe that there shouldn't be a separation of church and state, they are adamantly anti-abortion and they are adamantly against gay marriage. And so if that's true -- and I say if because I'm not sure that when we finally look back from the exit polls in post-elections, that we're not going to find more traditional explanations for this -- but if that's true, it gives an explanation for the divisiveness in this country right now.

That it's not going away, and that it's going to be very hard to resolve, because these are very two fundamental different views of the world and they're American versions of fundamentalism versus humanism, you know. And it is really the first time that there is a major challenge to some pretty basic constitutional principles, that historically Americans have believed in the separation of church and state, and the fact that that's not as strong now as it was before. We need to understand that better and know more about that.

The fact that people hate gay marriage or have strong views about abortion is not new. The fact that that's becoming clustered with other things is new; that is, if we really are having a cultural dimension now that separates people, not on their economic views or their international views but on their cultural views, then we have to find out how different are -- so, in other words, do people who have these cultural views also have the same economic views and also have the same view on international issues?

I would have said that the answer is yes, but it's not on the economic and cultural side. You have a lot of Republicans who are culturally not conservative but economically conservative. You have a lot of Republicans who, in the past, have been multilateralists and they're really struggling with where they're going to be. But if this is true, then we no longer have a center in American politics, because if you're in the middle of a cultural war, it's hard to be in the center. You have to choose a side.

And I think that's going to be one of the most interesting things to understand in this, and you will find women in both sides of this because women are going to be choosing between their cultural values and their economic interests. And that's what that book, "What's wrong with Kansas?" is about, you know, and it's why all this stuff is beginning to emerge now. And this will mark, if these new trends are correct, then this will mark a very new age in American politics.

We're going to look at politics in a very different way. Campaigns are going to be done differently. Organizing is going to be done differently. And I can't answer that now, but I encourage you to look for the answer to that because whatever the answer is, there's a story there. Okay?

So let me end with that and to say to you that it's up -- this election is up for grabs and the explanations will be up for grabs, and it's only after it's over that we're really going to understand what happened. So, okay.

MODERATOR: Do you want to choose your people or --

MS. KLEIN: No, why doesn't someone else do that?

MODERATOR: -- do it for you?

MS. KLEIN: Yes.

MODERATOR: Okay. Why don't we go here, and then here.

QUESTION: I'm Jiri Roskot and I work with Pravo daily newspaper, the Czech Republic.

And could you tell us what is the share of the young newly registered voters in the whole electorate, approximately? Do you have a number, 21 million, just --

MS. KLEIN: Right, but I don't know. It's a very good question. I will try to get the answer and e-mail it to you. I will e-mail it to you. Demographically, I think they're about 15 percent of the population. So if that represents, then they're 15 percent of the vote. But let me also check on that, you know, because the last time I looked at what percent of the population they were was the last election, and because things change so much and we're moving towards the baby bust, as opposed to the baby boom.

But your best guess is what percentage are they of the population. That's the most they're going to be. But if they're disproportionately for one candidate, they make a big difference because, in the past, they didn't show up. So that's their importance. So even if they're not that big, the fact that they're all going in or mostly going in one direction will make a difference. But it's a good question and I will try to answer it.

QUESTION: I'm with public television, Israel.

You quoted the book on Kansas that makes the case that people are kind of shooting themselves in the foot and voting against their economic --

MS. KLEIN: Economic interests, right.

QUESTION: Are women disproportionate higher group in that? In other words, are women intending now to vote more on their culture issues than on the economic issues?

MS. KLEIN: We haven't seen that. Okay? And that's a -- I need to get back to you on that.

Let me answer it in two different ways. The women who are for Kerry are not on the cultural side of the issue. They tend to -- even if they're anti-choice, it's not that important to them. It's not a voting issue for them. If the gay rights -- they don't like gay rights, it's not a voting issue for them. So the fact that more women are voting for Kerry would say that, you know, women are not disproportionately in that place.

But the hardcore, very strong Bush supporters come out of the churches. Now, historically, women are bigger churchgoers than men. Okay? And they -- increasingly, people are being encouraged to vote in their churches. And so this is -- you know, they tend to be more fundamentalist.

The fundamentalist churches that we're talking about have larger male attendance than the country at large, not as much as women, but they have larger male attendance. The other piece of this fundamentalist piece, though, is the definition of what it means to be male. You know, this culture war is partly about masculinity, and so there is much more opposition to gay marriage amongst men than there is amongst women. There is -- on gay rights in general, men are much more opposed to it than women.

It is about what does it mean when we talk about foreign policy and being a strong man, there is, when they talk about the NASCAR dad or they talk about, you know, the emotional patriot, it's part of this cultural war of "America first," and it is this masculine image of, "We are masters of the universe" in force. It's a very militarist image and it is one that is more likely to be found in this culture. So part of that culture war is the kick-ass American male. And so that's not disproportionately women, and women actually don't like that guy as much as men like that guy.

So it's more textured and complicated, all right? And I think that's why, in the end, we're going to have to look, like, for example, right now, we're hearing a lot about security moms, that there is a move towards women who are supporting Bush who are security moms. Well, these are the suburban married women who are going to vote for Bush no matter what. So whether they're there because of security or they're there because they're Republicans or they're there because they want more tax cuts or whatever reasons they're there, there were going to vote for Bush whatever. They were always going to be Bush voters.

However, there is, you know, the women's vote, which is usually for peace. Women are disproportionately more likely to say it was the wrong move to go to Iraq. However, women are also much more worried about terrorism, okay? So when we saw the security issue on the rape and crime issue, you do have to attend to the fact that women are concerned and they're very concerned about their kids. You know, the piece of 9/11 that keeps living -- in most of the country, if you don't live in New York or Washington, you know, it's fine, it happened, we're over it. But when they go to these Yellow or Red alerts, and they do them in schools, the kids come home scared, and the person who has to calm them down is their mom.

And so every time this happens, this generalized fear is what women deal with. And for some of them, they just want someone to do something about this, so they may go to Bush, and some of them will be so angry that it's being so badly handled and they may go to Kerry.

But I want you to know that that fear of terrorism is a women's issue, and it is a security issue, and it lives in women's lives very much through their children. And it's an ongoing thing. There are a lot of children who become traumatized by this and there are a lot of kids who inadvertently see violent pictures like the beheadings and other stuff that shouldn't be available to them.

So in the daily texture of people's lives, this election is living on terrorism, not because -- most Americans don't believe that there's going to be another attack very soon. But the fear of all this violence is really -- they're not used to it. They're not used to being in a world in which they are in danger. You know, we may have the biggest murder rate in the world, but we're used to that. We don't have a living experience of war within our own or near our borders, and in some ways, this is a rude awakening and a major shock. I mean, the rest of the world lives with this much more than we ever have. And, you know, some people respond in denial and we're going to make this never happen again, and some people respond in, we've got to figure out a way to live in this world. But it's new and it's very disturbing.

MODERATOR: Adriana.

QUESTION: Adriana Sadeanu, Business Weekly, Romania. Trying to understand these figures, my question is, how do you explain that less educated people vote -- tend to vote for Bush? Because if we suppose that these people have low incomes, and they should be more sensitive, logically speaking, to Kerry messages, so how do you explain? Is there a lack of attention or interest to judge and, you know, understand the whole information that are provided by both candidates, or there is -- or they are ready to pay a price, an economic price, in order to follow their, you know, conservatives beliefs and whatever is behind?

MS. KLEIN: I think it's the second, if I believe these numbers. I'm not sure these numbers are real. They're new. In other words, if you looked at the election in, I don't know, I'll say for sure July, people with low education weren't voting for Bush. The current polls are showing this new flip on education.

So I'm skeptical, although I think some of it is true. I do think there's a cultural component. But let's say it's true, okay? I think your second point is that they are voting their conservative views over their economic interests.

QUESTION: They are more interested in abortion rather than --

MS. KLEIN: Well, and I would say they're more interested in America first. In other words, you know, a lot of people saying a lot about abortion and economic -- but a big part of that is also "My country, right or wrong;" a big part of that is "We are the best in the world and don't you ever think we're not." They're the people who are unilateralists, don't ever want us to talk to another country. You know, women tend to be more isolationist, but if we're going to play, we want to play with others.

So there's a lot of men in this group, right? And there's a lot of men in this group and they really are, you know, the stereotypic "America first," "We're the best, we're the strongest," and "My country, right or wrong." And they're part of that culture war. There's a big culture war in this country right now about where we are in the world. I will also tell you that, on the other hand, the Democrats, and the unions especially and whatever interest group you've got going, have registered anywhere -- the numbers have been anywhere between two million and a half a million new voters, many of them poor people. Now, whether they get to vote or not, I don't know.

So there's a huge -- there's a woman raising her hand, I just want you to know that. There's a huge influx, there's a huge influx of poor people who are going to vote, and the Republicans are assuming they're going to vote Democratic because they're going -- they're sending all their lawyers to those districts in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania to try to see that -- you know, because they believe there's fraud, they're going to see that those votes don't count. Now, they believe they shouldn't count.

Now, you know what? The truth is, you're not going to kick that many people off the rolls, but you're going to have lines that are going to be three and four hours long going around six blocks. Historically, Americans will not stay on line for that long because they don't think it matters that much. This election, they may stay in line that long. They really may stay in line. And if they stay in line that long, this is a new age in American politics.

We are impatient, you know. We have ATMs so we don't have to stand in a bank for more than one second. We are not, you know -- so there's contradictory evidence.

QUESTION: Nancy Leahy, Sankei Shimbun. But people are standing in line for hours to register…

MS. KLEIN: Right, you know, and so what the Republicans are worried about is all these new voters that the Democrats are adding to the rolls, and they're not adding them from upper-educated -- first of all, those people are already registered. They're adding them from poor communities, from black communities, from Latino communities that are not Cuban. They're adding them from welfare lines. They're adding them from lower middle class people who are unemployed. They're going to all the places where economic interest rules.

And we'll watch what happens. If they actually do turn out, they're not in these polls because they didn't vote last time. So they're automatically not in these polls. So we may find out this whole education gap isn't real. I'm just telling it to you because you're going to reading about it. Okay?

QUESTION: Okay. Thank you.

QUESTION: Yes, Gianna Pontecorboli of Italy. I wanted to ask you, what about minority women? They tend to identify as women, or they tend to be sort of identifying more with the blacks or Latinos American as a block?

MS. KLEIN: They identify as a block as probably with their ethnic identity, but their ethnic identities are more democratic. But for example, what happens is, it's, you know, African American women are slightly more Democratic than African American men, but the number of real, you know, Republican African Americans is very small.

But there are many more African American women voting than African American men, for two reasons. One is, the normal reason, they live longer, especially since African American men die in violent crimes more often. But the second reason is, a large number of adult African American males are in jail, or they've been convicted of felonies and they can't vote, which, like, in Florida, if you're an African American male that's been in jail, you know, convicted, been in prison, convicted of a crime, you can't vote.

So the women's vote is a lot of these minority women because there's many more of them than minority men who are eligible for voting. And that's why you're seeing more and more people really taking a second look at what they're calling "felon disenfranchisement," that this trend towards not allowing people who have been convicted of felonies to vote, after they've served their time, that that's a denial of their constitutional right, and Florida is a big one in that. But their politics tends to be much more race-based, ethic-based. It just happens to be more Democratic.

MODERATOR: Would you take one more question, Ms. Klein?

QUESTION: Yeah, I'm Gry Winther from Norwegian Television and Radio. I was just wondering about the questions she was saying. Is it so the heart of the confusion to sort of put women or anybody in a group now, the fact that you only have two parties? Because I'm thinking, in Norway, we have, like, nine, and it's very easy to say that the neoconservatives, which are a different party than the conservatives, they would be the rulers that are very patriotic, that are very conservatives when it comes to values, they go to church.

But here, you would have, like, so many groups and so many peoples that belongs to different parties in European countries where there are many, to one. So would you say that's sort of the difficulty now, and if there is a change, is it like a pressure on the fact that you only have two parties?

MS. KLEIN: Well, there's a pressure that we only have two parties, and historically it's happened a couple of times. I don't know what's going to happen to our party system, but let me just tell you what it's usually been in the past. It's been a bell curve and Americans have been in the middle. Americans have been very unhappy with extremes, so -- and you know, the explanation of why we have no extremes in America the way we do in Europe, the academic explanation is we never had feudalism.

So America comes out of kind of when the middle class was kind of becoming a historical reality and everybody's kind of in the middle and we've never had a king, we've never had feudalism, you know, we've never had socialism because we never had feudalism. And, you know, so we're one historical experience and that we've also been mostly on an economic expansion historically so that people can really keep finding their way. We're a big country, we had a lot of resources, and one thing we've never really articulated is, you know, all this talk about trade agreements. Well, the United States, this is the first country that really is a bunch of states who formed a trade agreement. I mean, you know, you talk about NAFTA. The United States is, you know, a bunch of states, and we got rid of taxes, interstate commerce.

So we've been a very, you know, trading country in a big way for a very long time. And with globalization, that changes everything, including, probably, the party structure. But right now, historically -- and that's why, for example, you've had moderate Republicans. You know, if you think about the Rockefellers, if you think about, you know, people who've been elected as Republican presidents; Richard Nixon, compared to George Bush, is a moderate Republican.

These cultural issues are new in our -- and cultural issues tend to be black and white. You know, you also have had fiscally conservative Republicans who are Libertarian. So someone like Goldwater, who was extreme, hates the stuff about gay marriage and abortion as political issues because he's a Libertarian: the law shouldn't be deciding bedroom issues. He hates government and religion mixing together. So that these kinds of divisions actually are new, and so we don't know what to do with it.

We're also becoming much more economically bifurcated. So, you know, one of the things about this country is that everybody was happy for the rich because they all expected to be rich. You could not campaign on a tax cut for the rich but not for everybody else because it was unfair. And that's because everybody thought they were going to win the lottery and they were going to wind up being the rich guy and they didn't, you know, want anybody taking anything away from them.

But it is amazing to me how many -- I mean, you know, you do focus groups before with Americans and they believed the rich generated jobs. They believed the rich, you know, did all this good stuff and good for you. America's a country where we can all be millionaires. Yeah. Not everybody will be billionaires, but there's a huge number of millionaires right now. Well, they don't believe that anymore. The number of people who are anti-corporate in the United States right now, who thinks that the way corporations are behaving are obscene, is the highest it's ever been.

One of the things that the Kerry campaign is not pushing that surprises me, you see, the question has consistently been: Who does Bush represent, the interests of people like you, or the interests of the middle class or corporate interests? Sixty percent of Americans, that means a lot of people who are voting for him, say he represents the interests of corporate America. And if you ask them what they think about corporate America, they don't like it very much.

When we asked people, "Who cares and understands the problems faced by people like you?" Kerry gets many more votes than Bush. And so while he's pictured as this mainstream guy, that's really not where most Americans think of him. But that's not part of this campaign because the Republicans have done the culture war and the Democrats have stayed away from it.

The second thing that's happened, and I -- is you'll find out that John Kerry, left to his own devices, loves to talk about national security. He's a patrician. These economic issues are not his big thing. I mean, he votes as a Democrat, right? But he's been on the Foreign Intelligence Committee. He passionately cares about war veterans; he cares about international peace stuff; he cares about Nuclear Arms Treaty; he can talk about throw weights with the best of them; so he wants to talk about that and he doesn't, or he learned, maybe too late, that that's on Bush's turf.

Bush set that agenda when they -- you know, this is a big difference between the Clinton campaign and the Kerry campaign. You know, the Clintons had the war room? If you put out an ad, like, it could be this little piece of a, you know, a newspaper ad, this small that only ran in, like, the morning, or ran in, like, a town of 300, they would find it and they would answer it immediately.

The war room was about addressing negative campaign tactics because the Republicans are very good at it. I'm not telling you the Democrats don't do it. They're just not as good at it. You know, this is not a moral judgment here.

When the swift boat ads came out, they went unanswered and they set the agenda. The fact that they went unanswered for a month -- this is unbelievable. This is a huge mistake. You know, I'm sure there'll be books written about why, and I'll be anxious to read why. But it's a huge mistake. Given the way American politics works now, it is a major testimony to how angry Americans are at Bush that he can't close this deal.

You know, he can't run on his own record. I mean, it's not like he's running for the first time, which is how we're treating this election. He's an incumbent President. For this to be this close is a major indictment of his Administration because, usually, you vote for the guy who got you here, right? And if you don't like where he is, then you go vote for somebody else. But he has succeeded through those swift boat ads and everything else -- see? -- to play the politics of fear against the politics of anger.

This is not unlike Carter and Reagan reversed. You know, people were afraid of Ronald Reagan. He was an extremist. But they were very angry at George Bush. Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter. And you know when they decided that election? The weekend before. The polls were neck-and-neck, and then there was this Anderson guy, which just made it more confusing.

But the first -- in 1980, the first Reagan election, the polls were neck-and-neck, and Reagan wound up winning big because the weekend right before the election, lots of things broke. And one of the things that broke were the churches in all of these conservative places made major culture war campaigns. You sat down in your church seat and there was a fetus sitting there. There was whatever other cultural issue was sitting there. The other thing was, the ads were about the dishonor of America.

You know, Day X of the hostages. They are very strong. It's this other macho piece where we cannot let America's position in the world be tarnished. He has shamed us. He has dishonored us. And there were very strong ads about dishonoring America. And that's a very powerful emotion in these places that we've been talking about. And so they broke. And that's what to watch, where it breaks after the weekend. So it's the Monday Zogby poll that I'm going to be watching. (Laughter.)

QUESTION: Can I pick up on something you said about Carter and Reagan? How is it possible to make a connection between the women's vote and the growth and importance of likeability of a candidate that started since, say, with Kennedy?

MS. KLEIN: Yeah.

QUESTION: Because Reagan was a likeable candidate.

MS. KLEIN: But the women didn't vote for him. They didn't like him so much. And they didn't like -- I'm trying to think of who else was a charismatic leader -- you know, the Kennedy numbers are very suspicious, so I don't want to say one thing or another about that. But consistently they didn't like Reagan. And I'm trying to think of who else is a charismatic politician who they haven't really liked.

QUESTION: So there is no clear connection between likeability and female vote?

MS. KLEIN: No, no. And I will tell you, for example, one of the things that Reagan did was, he said, you know -- he said something like, you know, women need to, like, follow the man because he makes the money. (Laughter.) That didn't go very well. They didn't like that a lot. They didn't care how much he loved his wife.

I think there's a lot of women who are more favorable towards Bush but won't vote for him, frankly. They just won't vote for him because they don't like what he's doing to the country, but they don't dislike him.

You need to call on people. I'm sorry. I'm just saying I don't want to do that.

MODERATOR: The woman over here. Okay.

MS. KLEIN: Okay, thank you.

QUESTION: I have two questions. I want to come back to the politics of fear. How much of concern is the draft? Is it the same that happens with (inaudible)? Are they afraid that their children will be asked to go to war?

And the other thing is, I have the impression from what you said that women is to put more issues on the table when they will decide for whom they will vote. So my question is, is it harder for women to take a decision that can (inaudible)?

MS. KLEIN: Yes. Let me answer pieces of that.

The first piece is about the draft. I think for anybody who believes there is a draft, that will motivate the younger voters. If they believe there's going to be a draft, then you will see a big turnout amongst young voters. And I'm not sure there's going to be a gender gap on that. But I do think that, you know, if mothers believe there's going to be a draft, I mean, Americans right now don't believe there will be a draft. But if they did believe there might be a draft, that certainly would make women be much less ready to vote for the Republican if they thought that's who was going to do -- whoever was going to do the draft, they would not be happy about it.

At the same time, they really believe in serving with honor. I want you to know that they really -- I don't want you to think that American women -- women whose sons are serving in the Army support their sons there and are not -- are really deciding on whether they think they're getting the kind of support they are. So if they believe that, you know, these stories about they don't have enough vests and they don't have enough armor, then they're not supporting this war. They want something different.

If they believe that their sons are fighting for America's honor and they are being supported and that their troops are being well protected, then they're for their children and they're going to support it. They're not a blanket peace vote, but they are -- they want a lot more reassurances than men. They're more scared. They believe their kids are going to die more. It's a very heartfelt issue.

The second is, women need more information to make their decisions. The women who haven't decided -- let me go back to saying 60 percent of the swing voters, which are -- or the undecided -- they're undecideds or weakly committed. So the people who either move around or keep telling pollsters they're undecided are women. They tend to be less educated. They tend to be intermittent voters. And when we do interviews with them, what they will tell you is, they're overwhelmed by how important the decision is; that it's such a serious responsibility they don't want to make a wrong choice; and that when you have conflicting things, they're not going to make that choice till the very end.

So for example, they are very supportive of Kerry's position on health care, social security, prescription drugs. But they're also not sure he's a commander-in-chief. They're not sure that he speaks his convictions. They have questions about his character. So they've not yet made up their mind, and they're not going to make up their mind until the day before. If you haven't made up your mind today, you're not making up your mind until the day before. And they are, like, worried about making a mistake.

You know, I'm like, me, I'm not worrying about making a mistake. I've got my idea, I'm going to go for my person and that's that. They feel like, you know, because they're less educated, because they don't read the newspaper all the time, because they're only paying attention right now, it's a much harder thing for them.

QUESTION: Oh. I understand that there's a large problem with -- oh, Nancy Leahy with the Japanese newspaper called Sankei Shimbun.

A lot of potential women voters don't go to the polls. Isn't -- doesn't that show -- is it because they feel overwhelmed by this decision so they just decide not to vote? Or is it because of logistical problems: They're driving their kids back and forth to piano lessons and they just don't have time?

MS. KLEIN: Let me go back to something I said to you because, like anything else, there's not one answer.

The reality is that more women vote than men. So you've got at least 4 million more women voting than men, some people say 6 million more women voting than men. And the real number is on the Center for the American Woman in Politics, if you want to know where that is. You know, you just go to their web site and they'll give you all the numbers, right? There are more registered voters who are women than men partly because there's more women in the population than men. Okay?

There is an age group, which is young mothers, who disproportionately don't vote. They don't do much of anything, frankly, except feed, diaper, and if they can find a second, sleep. But other than that there isn't, in turnout, that much difference between women and men. I mean, I think in some economic groups, maybe poorer women turn out less. But -- and I think some of that is education. But in the whole scheme of things, more women are voting.

So I wouldn't really focus on turnout as much, although what you're going to find is if these newly registered people -- and you are registering more poor people -- then you're registering more women, because women are more likely to be poor in this country, disproportionately more likely to be poor because they're single or they're unmarried. But the reason people take the gender gap this seriously is because there'll be more women voting. I mean, that's the bottom line.

Yeah.

QUESTION: Sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you. Adriana Sadeanu again from Romania. I was -- my question would be exactly linked with what you mentioned before. Why do you think that there are so many undecided voters? Is there a -- is it Iraq or terror, war on terror made them so undecided or these women especially overwhelmed by the decision? Because I suppose if the economic and social issues, I mean, they were judging these kind of things before the elections where even they didn't vote, so they are familiar with. And what could be so overwhelming and what could make them so undecided?

MS. KLEIN: They're afraid that Kerry isn't strong enough.

QUESTION: So, but further, they are afraid that Kerry isn't strong enough --

MS. KLEIN: As a national leader to run the country.

QUESTION: So they are afraid of security, basically. It's a security issue here more than an economic one?

MS. KLEIN: Yes. Yeah. And it's what's going to be the tradeoff. And the Democrats have made it -- have allowed it to be a security issue in the end.

QUESTION: Can we say that these undecided voters are more concerned about security than about the economy?

MS. KLEIN: No, no, no. They're more concerned about economics, but they haven't made up their mind because they're still concerned about security. It's how they break. If they -- if these undecided voters break for Kerry, it's because economics mattered more.

QUESTION: Okay.

MS. KLEIN: Right? I mean, right now, when they're undecided, they're balancing two things. One is, if they are voting on their economic concerns more of them would break for Kerry. But the Republicans have made a very strong case about, can this man lead this country? He flip-flops, he is not strong enough to vote his convictions and, you know, they question his militarism.

You see, when the Democrats made Kerry their nominee, they had a Vietnam veteran who they thought -- and, you know, an expert on foreign affairs. They thought we couldn't do better than this. They just forgot that he's a Vietnam veteran who came back and said this war is wrong. And one of the big schisms in this country is where you were on the Vietnam War. It lives endlessly. You know, most of that generation's going to die and it's still going to live in this country. You know, after slavery, I think this is the biggest thing that has a life of its own. It's not to be underestimated.

And what Kerry didn't do was take it off the past. He kept going. You know, we had ads and ads and ads of what a hero he was. But he kept it on the past, and people want to know what he's going to do in the future. And he hasn't convinced him that he's got -- they're not happy with Bush on Iraq. You know, the number of people who say it was wrong to go in. You have to understand, Americans hate -- if they're in a war -- it's unbelievable the number of people who are saying it's wrong. They usually side with their guy until he's out of office, and then they'll tell you this was the worst thing that ever happened.

Americans are telling pollsters they think it's a mess, they're not sure we can ever win it, they're very angry that there's been no planning, which is why Bush can't run on his record, right? But he can run on fear that -- the Kerry campaign had to come to this making people feel secure. The best thing that ever happened to John Kerry was the debates because it's the first time people saw him as leader. His numbers on, not issue positions, changed. His numbers on, can you trust this guy, do you have confidence in him? Still not as good as they need to be, but they've been going up steady once people saw him as a strong figure and saw him standing up.

QUESTION: But Bush has such a bad record in figures. I mean, there are numbers that can, you know, shatter his image.

MS. KLEIN: Yes, but you know what?

QUESTION: How do you explain that he still stands at this 47-48, whatever and --

MS. KLEIN: Because people believe that he is morally upright and that he -- I know it's hard to understand this, but they believe that, you know, his convictions, that he's not lying; he was misled. They believe he's a man of principle and they believe he's a man of God.

QUESTION: Helena Celestina from O Globo. How much this appeals more for women, his saying he is a man of God and what all they should do this and that?

MS. KLEIN: I think if there actually came out that God told him to do this, he would lose a lot of moderate Republican votes. I don't think America is ready yet -- maybe next time -- is ready yet. I mean, because Bush has very strongly backpedaled from Pat Robertson saying, God told me there wouldn't be that many casualties, that's why he took the risk. But there are women who are -- very much love him because he loves Jesus and they love Jesus. And they're -- that's a core part of his vote. And they're -- we have to remember there's a gender gap because more women are on the side of the Democrats than on the Republicans, but there's a core of women who will always vote for morally conservative Republicans, and that's his religious view that holds them.

QUESTION: How do the undecided tend to break, when it comes to women? Because they say it's like --

MS. KLEIN: Sixty percent. Yeah, 60 percent of the undecideds are women.

QUESTION: And they tend to break for the incumbent, or the --

MS. KLEIN: We have no idea how they're going to vote. (Laughter.)

QUESTION: But before, historically.

MS. KLEIN: Well, historically -- historically, what they would tell you is that if the President is not getting them now, something unique has to happen for him to get them. So we've got a couple more days, you know. We don't know what's going to happen. I mean, Kerry got a boost when the stolen tonnage of explosives, right, because that made the people who are mad that America looks weak and stupid -- every time we look weak and stupid, some voters get mad at Bush. Other voters get mad because they think you're picking on his guy, because once he's your guy, you know, once you've decided to vote for someone, any new information gets filtered through "they're picking on my guy," you know.

So, you know, this has become like a sports event. It's tribal right now. You know, American politics has not been tribal. It feels tribal right now, but if you're really for Bush or you're really for Kerry, there's no room for any other questions. And when you ask people, will you -- how high stakes are these elections? -- this is the highest stakes we've ever registered. People believe this is the most important election. But you ask them, how upset are you going to be if your candidate doesn't win, 67 percent of Kerry people say they're going to be very upset, and 60 percent of Bush people say they're going to be upset. This country is very divided.

Even in the past, even in 2000, there were people who were upset because they thought the election was stolen, but they didn't think George Bush was going to be all that bad, you know. Well, right now, they do think George Bush is going to be all that bad, and the Kerry voters think George Bush is going to be all that bad, and the Bush voters think that Kerry will be all that bad.

This not, "Oh, I don't like him, but he's an okay guy," like the world isn't going to end. They think the world is going to end. We've never had this before and it's really strange.

QUESTION: Can I follow up --

MODERATOR: Your identification.

QUESTION: Sorry, my name is Marta Torres. I work for Spanish newspaper La Razon, based in Madrid. You have to ask before George W. Bush is a man of values. And who is John Kerry for voters right now? Who represents --

MS. KLEIN: John Kerry, who does he represent?

QUESTION: Yes.

MS. KLEIN: Right now, he's getting a lot of his support from highly educated, more upper income. He's getting support from union workers; you need to know that. You've got that on this table here. He's getting support from people who are less fundamentalist, who believe they're religious but don't go to church every week. He's getting support from people who believe that the economy's in terrible shape. And he's getting support from people who believe the war in Iraq is a mess. That's who's supporting him.

QUESTION: But what are going to be the next challenges for the United States or for the next President of United States?

MS. KLEIN: The next President of the United States is going to have to rule in a very divided country. That's a big challenge. My guess is it's a different challenge for Bush than for Kerry, because no one believed that someone who could not really get elected with the popular vote, or barely got elected, was not going to be centrist in their politics. Like if you barely made it, in American politics, the closer the election, the more middle of the road the President is.

So people expected this to be a middle-of-the-road presidency. This has not been a middle-of-the-road presidency. This is a president who has a view of what he wants to do and he does it. There were huge numbers of protest against this war, didn't faze him. And I think it should have fazed him, and that may be my own personal opinion, but I'm just saying to you, he really believes he knows what needs to happen and he goes for it. He will do that again.

John Kerry is a different kind of president. He comes from this -- you know, he's been a senator his whole life, they get along, they go along, they're all gentlemen. He's got a party that's more worried about finding a center, you know, getting the Senate back. He also, I'm not sure knows exactly what needs to happen next, which is what people are picking up, you know. It's one thing to say we need to bring in other people, but, you know, well, what's that going to look like, you know? There's no easy out of this. Once you're in a mess, it's much harder to get out of it.

So he's probably going to be much more centrist, much more cautious, and you'll have a very different -- and I don't know how he's going to negotiate that.

QUESTION: You've probably already -- I'm Barbara Schneeman from Dutch Television. And you've probably already answered most of my questions just there. But what I wonder, what strikes me, is that if we win the vote out of -- you know, if fear is a very important issue to them, and national security and international security is an issue, and they still vote for Bush because they feel he can defend their security better than Kerry would, I mean, how do they explain the aggression of the world against Bush? I would feel safer with a person that has consensus in the world more than would a leader that is evoking aggression.

MS. KLEIN: I would tell you that Americans are unbelievably myopic.

QUESTION: What does that mean?

MS. KLEIN: That means that they only care what they think. They historically don't care what the world thinks. If you saw the debates, Bush made a point that he doesn't want Europe's approval.

QUESTION: Yeah.

MS. KLEIN: What's different about this --

QUESTION: And United Nations --

MS. KLEIN: Yeah, he really doesn't care about the United Nations. The mistake he's made, this is the first time the polls are showing that we're upset about the fact that most of the world doesn't like us. Usually we don't care. We changed french fries to freedom fries, and then we don't go buy their wine and we punish them.

It's beginning to register. Americans are more global now, so they have more contact with other parts of the world, but it's still -- you've got to remember, most Americans don't have a passport. We're a very insular country. I'm embarrassed by that, but that's where it is.

You know, and the people who don't care, the fact that their lives aren't going that well, who should be -- you know, voting their economic interests, are saying, well, as least I belong to the strongest, most economic, powerful, best country in the world, and it's what makes them special. And they believe Kerry is trying to take that away from them. He isn't, but they believe he is.

And so it's not always rational, but that's where they are. Now, I want to be very clear. You're going to find out more women are going to vote for Kerry than Bush. Whether he wins or not, you're going to have more women voting for Kerry than Bush. And I don't -- you know, people don't talk about economic security, but women are really worried about paying their bills.

QUESTION: More than men?

MS. KLEIN: More than men. But they have less money than men. I mean, it's the reality; they just have less money. They are literally the ones without health insurance, and they're the ones with the kids without health insurance. So the question is how many of them are going to break this way, not if they're going to break this way.

MODERATOR: Do you have time for one more?

QUESTION: Yes. First, what do you think should be the strongest appeal to women in these final days of the campaign?

MS. KLEIN: I think if you talk to undecided women, and you are John Kerry, you have to talk about economic security. You have to say, this campaign is focused on national security. But there's another hidden fear that all of you face, and that is, you're not going to be able to make your mortgage payments. We don't care how cheap your mortgages are, the number of people going into debt is unbelievable. You're really worried because your health benefits are gone and your children are no longer covered. You're really worried because your husband has lost his job and the new one is making 10 percent less. You're really worried because -- and I know this and this has got to be turned around.

And if I was George Bush, I would do exactly what he's doing and continue. This man is not fit to be the commander-in-chief of the only superpower left in the world. We are the only hope for freedom, and you may or may not like it, but we at least stand on the right of democracy against evil, and this man will not stand up to evil. That's my advice, and I hope nobody's listening. (Laughter.)

QUESTION: I'm just wondering, can you tell us, please, how many young people, how many kids, are among these undecided voters?

MS. KLEIN: I don't know.

QUESTION: I don't know.

MS. KLEIN: No. I can try to find out.

QUESTION: If these young people are going to vote first, they are undecided an important percentage or not?

MS. KLEIN: I think the number of undecided is small and I just don't think a lot of them are kids, but I don't know, because if they show up, these kids already know they're voting for Kerry. That's what the polls are telling us. But we don't know if they'll show up.

QUESTION: Okay. Thank you very much.

MODERATOR: Thank you so much. It was wonderful.

MS. KLEIN: Thank you.