Campaigns Have Strategy for Couples Who Disagree

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/03/us/politics/campaigns-have-strategy-for-disagreeing-couples.html

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FAIRFAX, Va. — When Pat Rosend received a “Vote” flier from Democrats, she stuck it on her refrigerator door.

Her husband, Dave, who has always voted Republican, drew an “X” over the Democratic congressman depicted on the flier with President Obama.

Yet Mr. Rosend says he remains “on the fence” about whether he will vote for Mitt Romney — and cancel out his wife’s strong support for Mr. Obama.

The Rosends illustrate a little-scrutinized variable of the campaign’s results: the influence that spouses can have on each other’s voting decisions.

In a skintight presidential race, pillow talk and kitchen-table discussions could make a difference to each party’s bid to close its gender gap in battlegrounds like Colorado, Ohio and Virginia. In this week’s New York Times/CBS News poll — a dead heat among likely voters with 48 percent for Mr. Obama and 47 percent for Mr. Romney — the Republican challenger had support from 51 percent of men but just 44 percent of women, while the Democratic incumbent held the backing of 52 percent of women but just 44 percent of men.

As those still undecided make up their minds this final weekend, “conversations people have with their spouses will be at least as important as all the TV ads people are seeing,” said Geoff Garin, a pollster for Democrats.

Those who have studied political dynamics within households say that roughly three-fourths of married couples vote the same way. Because people seek spouses with similar values, they typically have similar political views to begin with. But couples who disagree, said Paul Allen Beck, a political scientist at Ohio State University, usually make at least a cursory attempt to resolve their differences. It is a factor both parties take into account in their data-driven process of identifying and mobilizing potential supporters.

Obama campaign organizers consider the political orientation of a spouse among the characteristics most predictive of where an undecided voter will end up. Michael Meyers of TargetPoint Consulting, a firm that helps Mr. Romney with voter turnout, said the political views of a Republican’s spouse help determine whether and how a household gets courted, both for purposes of locking down its support and for ensuring that its members actually vote.

The firm’s database might show that the spouse of a gun-rights supporter holds a different view on that issue, for example. If so, Mr. Meyers said, the household might receive anti-tax rather than “Second Amendment” literature in support of the Republican ticket.

At A.F.L.-C.I.O. offices in Washington this week, organizers of a phone bank direct callers to discuss the impact of issues on entire families in hopes of leveraging the persuasive power of spouses. Amber Sparks, a volunteer making calls to back the Democratic ticket, heard from a steelworker in Virginia that “his wife was for Obama, but he wasn’t so sure,” Ms. Sparks recalled. “I said he should listen to his wife.”

A few chairs away, another caller, Lisa Aaron, reached a female Obama backer who noted that her husband leaned the other way because he opposed government-financed contraceptive coverage. “I said, ‘You just really have to work on him,’ ” Ms. Aaron recounted. “She said, ‘I’ll do that, but he’s a hard nut to crack.’ ”

Laura Stoker, a professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley, studied the political preferences of 150 couples over a series of elections. Her conclusion: “Wives are more inclined to move toward their husbands than husbands are to move toward their wives.”

That would seem to augur well for Mr. Romney, given his disproportionate support among men. But Mr. Meyers of TargetPoint, echoing Professor Stoker’s research, noted that the most influential partner is the one who knows and cares most about the election.

That could help Mr. Romney in blue-collar households, where “men do more of the talking,” Mr. Garin said. But after months in which Democrats hammered Mr. Romney on issues like abortion and contraception, Mr. Garin concluded from focus groups that Mr. Obama might benefit from the dynamic within more affluent suburban households.

In Virginia, this week’s New York Times/CBS News/Quinnipiac University poll showed, Mr. Obama has driven up his support among white college-educated women to 58 percent from 46 percent on Election Day 2008. His support among white college-educated men remained fairly steady at 39 percent in the recent poll, compared with 41 percent in 2008, according to exit polls conducted by Edison/Mitofsky. “The strength of support for Obama among college-educated women at the very least sparks conversation in those households, and gives college-educated men another thing to think about,” Mr. Garin said.

That has already happened inside the Rosends’ town house in this sprawling Northern Virginia suburb. Ms. Rosend, 48, a landscape architect, said she feels “passionately” about the election because she approves of Mr. Obama’s health care bill and his efforts to revive the economy, and because she sees Mr. Romney as “stuck in a different era” on issues of special concern to women.

Mr. Rosend, also 48, an information technology manager, is a National Rifle Association member. Despite his wife’s misgivings, he has taught their sons how to handle firearms. Her Mazda sports an Obama bumper sticker; his Mazda does not.

“I’m not a big fan of the president,” Mr. Rosend said. But even though he backed Senator John McCain four years ago, and has never supported a Democrat for the White House, he said he is considering it this time.

He said he fears that Mr. Obama would seek “full-bore” tax increases in a second term, but also that Mr. Romney might eliminate his mortgage interest deduction as part of an overhaul of the tax code. Like his wife, Mr. Rosend said he has concluded that Mr. Romney is “out of touch” with average Americans on economic issues.

“I don’t think either of them has great plans,” he said. “It’s who will do the least damage.”

Usually, Ms. Rosend said, “We don’t talk about politics that much because it can be painful.” But the couple watched this year’s party conventions and Obama-Romney debates together. Ms. Rosend has been trying to persuade her husband by pointing out parts of the president’s record he might like, from provisions in Mr. Obama’s health plan to his caution about committing troops to new conflicts in the Middle East.

On Tuesday, she may take their 13-year-old son, David, to their polling place at a nearby Catholic church to give him a taste of the Democratic process. (Professor Stoker found that, whatever the dynamic between spouses, children are more likely to take political cues from their mothers.)

Mr. Rosend said he will vote, too — his first ballot for a Democratic presidential contender, if his wife gets her way. If he decides otherwise, she said with a hopeful chuckle, perhaps he will neglect to get around to it.