Maxed-Out Moms: The Deciding Vote

Meet the woman of the year: White, high school–educated and probably on the north side of age 50, she is getting the worst of a bad economy. She's worrying about whether her daughter will be able to afford college and her father his medicine. Her husband can barely afford the gasoline it takes to get back and forth from a job he's in danger of losing — and with it, their health insurance. She's getting her hair cut less often and sometimes has to put her utility bill on her Visa. She's the woman doing the laundry at 11 p.m., because it's the first chance she's had all day to do it. So it's no surprise that she hasn't yet gotten around to settling on Barack Obama or John McCain — though how she votes may well determine the outcome of the election.

She is, in short, a woman who might have a few things in common with Lori Stern, an administrative assistant in Des Moines, Iowa, who lost her second job at a coffee shop when it closed. Stern went to her state's Republican caucuses last January, listened and left without voting. She still hasn't made up her mind, though she's now leaning toward Obama. "I'm very aware of what's going on, and have paid attention, but I find it really hard to be trustful of politicians in general," she says. That sentiment is echoed by Beth Seidel, a factory worker in Cleveland who works the third shift so she can take her son to school and then to practices for the four sports he plays. Pausing recently at a Wal-Mart, she said: "Honestly, I don't know what to do. I really don't want to vote for McCain. You can tell he only cares about rich people. Sarah Palin wears glasses that cost $300. McCain's wife wears Gucci clothes. Which means they don't know anything about people like me." Into that stew of assumptions, she adds: "I hear that Obama's a Muslim. If he is a Muslim, that would be a problem, because the terrorists already attacked us." (He's not.)

Their profiles change from campaign to campaign, but women like Stern and Seidel have been deciding U.S. elections for years. In 1996, they were the "soccer moms" Bill Clinton captured to win re-election. After 9/11, they morphed into the security moms who helped give George W. Bush a second term. Four years later, they are a little older, and their anxieties have multiplied. Their numbers are enormous: They typically account for as much as 12% of the electorate. The two campaigns are referring to them as Wal-Mart moms, but a better name might be maxed-out moms.

More pragmatic than partisan, "non-college-educated white women are the ultimate swing voters and the ultimate late deciders," says Mary Beth Cahill, who was John Kerry's 2004 campaign manager. "They swing back and forth with every new piece of information." In the Democratic primaries, they came out in force for Hillary Clinton. Many say they wish Obama had put her on the ticket, but on the issues they still tilt toward the Democrats. Given their worries about the direction of the country, their low regard for the current occupant of the White House and the fact that women voters normally trend more Democratic than men do, Obama has some reason to believe he should carry the maxed-out mom vote in the general election.

At the moment, however, McCain seems to be winning them handily — which is a big reason for the growing nervousness among the Democratic rank and file. A new TIME poll, conducted Sept. 11-15, shows Obama and McCain running a dead heat among women overall. But McCain holds an 18-point lead among older, less-educated likely women voters. "Frankly, it's because they are conflicted on Obama," says pollster Geoff Garin, who served as the chief strategist for Clinton's campaign in its final days. "They'd like to vote for a Democrat, but they are not sure Obama is the one."

****Read More!****