More voters opposing Clinton, favoring Rice

WASHINGTON -- Growing numbers of Americans oppose a presidential bid by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., in 2008 -- and favor a run by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice -- amid broad public willingness to elect a woman president, according to a nationwide poll released Sunday.

The Presidents Day survey conducted for Hearst Newspapers by the Siena Research Institute of Siena College in Loudonville, N.Y., covered 1,120 registered voters and was completed Feb. 10.

About 48 percent of survey participants said Rice "should run" for president at the conclusion of President Bush's two terms -- an increase of 6 percentage points from a similar survey a year ago.

But Clinton saw opposition to her own presidential bid grow during the same period. About 44 percent of survey respondents now say that Clinton "should not run" for president in 2008 -- up from 37 percent who felt that way last year.

The percentage of registered voters who say Clinton "should run" slipped from 53 percent to 51 percent during the past year, as support for a Rice candidacy increased, from 42 percent to 48 percent.

The survey found that 79 percent of participants were willing to vote for a woman as president and 64 percent said the nation was "ready" for one.

The survey did not test a head-to-head race between Clinton and Rice.

The margin of sampling error for the survey in both years was plus or minus 2.9 percentage points. That could mean that Clinton's 2 percentage point drop in the "should run" category may not represent an actual change.

The survey found that a majority of registered voters thought a woman president would handle national security-related issues as well as a male president, including serving as commander in chief of the armed services.

Douglas Lonnstrom, head of the Siena Research Institute, said the findings coupled with results from a comparable poll by his organization last year suggest the nation is on the cusp of a dramatic political change.

"As things stand now, I see a real possibility that a woman will be elected president in 2008," said Lonnstrom, a professor of finance and statistics and member of the American Association for Public Opinion Research. "Disapproval of President Bush has opened voters' eyes to alternatives -- and women benefit from that."

The latest nationwide Gallup Poll showed 56 percent of respondents disapproving of Bush's job performance and 39 percent approving -- the third lowest approval rating of his presidency.

Sally Friedman, a political scientist at the State University of New York-Albany, cautioned that the generic support for a woman president reflected in the poll could decline when voters get closer to weighing the strengths and weaknesses of actual candidates.

"Right now the election is more than two years away and pretty hypothetical," said Friedman, who studies women in politics. "That will change the closer we get."

The survey detected a wide disparity of views between Democrats and Republicans, with 91 percent of Democrats expressing willingness to elect a woman compared with 68 percent of Republicans.

The back-to-back Siena College surveys conducted a year apart showed that 28 percent of registered voters believe the nation is not ready for a woman president in 2008. Among those, 23 percent said the country would be ready by 2012, 16 percent said it would be ready by 2016 and 17 percent said the United States would "never" be ready.

Scholars say the nation's readiness to elect a woman stems in part from voters seeing so many other nations elevate women to the highest political office, including recent elections of women to lead Germany, Chile and Liberia.

The Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., sees the number of women officeholders across the United States near or above all-time records. A total of 14 women serve in the Senate; 67 women in the House; and 79 women hold statewide elective offices, including eight governors and 15 lieutenant governors.

"We're close to electing a woman president because of steady progress over the last 40 years," Friedman says.

The first woman ran for president in 1872 against President Grant, 48 years before women won the constitutional right to vote. It took until 1984 for the first woman to be chosen for a national ticket by Republicans or Democrats, with Rep. Geraldine Ferraro, D-N.Y., joining the losing Democratic ticket led by former Vice President Walter Mondale.

The Siena survey, sweeping aside stereotypes, found that a majority of respondents viewed a woman president on a par with a male president on a variety of leadership issues.

53 percent of respondents said a woman president would match a male president as commander in chief. Fifty-nine percent saw matching performances on foreign policy.

50 percent of survey respondents said there would be "no difference" between a woman president and a male president when it came to ordering troop withdrawals from Iraq. The Siena Poll found 38 percent of respondents believed a woman would be "more inclined" than a man to withdraw troops.

Fewer respondents said the nation needed a woman to serve as vice president before voters would elect a woman president. The 2006 survey found that only 27 percent felt the nation first needed a woman vice president -- down from 31 percent last year. The percentage of respondents who felt it was unnecessary to first have a woman vice president grew from 53 percent last year to 62 percent in the latest survey.

A woman president outpaced a male president on handling natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, with 38 percent of respondents seeing a better response by a woman compared with 8 percent who said a woman president would do worse than a man. Similarly, a woman president was rated ahead of a male president on health and education issues.

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