In 2008, then Sen. Barack Obama beat Sen. John McCain by 14 percentage points among female voters, despite the presence of Gov. Sarah Palin on the Republican ticket. In his 2012 re-election, President Obama did arguably better, besting Gov. Mitt Romney by 12 points among women while losing men by eight points (Obama tied McCain among men), a record 20 point “gender gap.”
Republicans likely need to shrink that gap to win the presidency in 2016. Running against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will make that hard. The Republican primary process may make it nearly impossible.
With neither a Democratic incumbent nor a Republican heir apparent, everyone feels they have a chance. There are currently 10 announced Republican presidential candidates. That doesn’t include former Gov. Jeb Bush and Gov. Scott Walker, who are almost certain to run, or Donald Trump, Gov. John Kasich and Gov. Bobby Jindal, who have expressed an interest.
The field is diverse in many ways. It includes governors, senators and political outsiders. There are religious conservatives, libertarians, deficit hawks and national security hawks. There are two Latino candidates, an African American and one woman: former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina. The GOP would love to put that diversity on display, but they have run into a problem: it doesn’t fit on a debate stage.
Fox News and CNN will be hosting the first debates, and have preliminarily limited the stage to 10 candidates. Both plan to use national polls to determine who gets a podium, though each will use different criteria. Unfortunately for Republican efforts to woo women voters, Fiorina is currently waiting in the wings.
According to fivethirtyeight.com, current polling has Fiorina in 12th place for both debates. By the somewhat vague Fox method, Fiorina’s participation depends on whether they round up her 1.6 percent to match Gov. John Kasich and former Sen. Rick Santorum, who are tied for 10th/11th at a whopping 2.0 percent. With Fiorina at 1.3 percent, more than a rounding error away from Kasich and Santorum at 2.0 percent, CNN can feel somewhat better about omitting the only woman. At least until they consider the margin of error for the polls. Assuming a margin of +/- 2 percent, Fiorina could be as high as 8th or as low as last.
The numbers matter less than the optics. A party that needs to narrow the gender gap can’t leave the only female candidate off the stage. Further, Fiorina has shown a willingness and ability to directly attack Sec. Clinton. Like it or not, Fiorina’s presence on the stage will make it harder to spin attacks by other candidates as sexist. She also happens to be a fairly good speaker with a unique viewpoint in the field.
The Republican Party has tried to insulate themselves from any backlash by letting the media partners set the rules. It won’t work. To narrow the gender gap, they need to get Fiorina on stage. Hopefully her poll numbers will increase; if not, the number of podiums should.
