Is Mitt Romney Really Beating President Obama Among Women?

There's an old song called "Spinning Wheel" from back in the day and one of the lines is "what goes up, must come down." That is so true if you look at the polls during this residential election. They seem to change hourly and many of them completely contradict one another.

Take for example the CBS/New York Times poll showing Mitt Romney up by 2 percent over President Obama with women. Gallup shows the president up by 8 percent over Romney, and many other polls show the president doing much better among female voters than Mitt Romney.

[See a collection of political cartoons on the 2012 campaign.]

Now of course different polls use different methodology. Some use robocalls, some use live person-to-person callers. (The latter I feel are more accurate.) Could the president have lost so many female voters in a day or so?!  He could have, but that isn't very likely.

Now those on the right will argue that the president's support of gay marriage is the reason for this, or Mitt Romney's Mother's Day ad, or Hilary Rosen's attack on Ann Romney or Democrats' attack about the $900 and change blouse Mrs. Romney was wearing.

But I do not believe any of that to be true.

First, the majority of women, as do the majority of Americans, support gay marriage. Secondly, those women who do not support gay marriage most likely are Republicans and would not have supported President Obama regardless of his position on that issue.

[See a collection of political cartoons on gay marriage.]

So what does this roller coaster polling tell us? That the American people are confused. They like the president, overwhelmingly over Mitt Romney. They don't like what the president's done with the economy, yet they like the fact it has turned around and is growing; they just want the turn around to happen much, much quicker.  They like the idea of Mitt Romney, a wealthy businessman who created jobs with Staples during his days at Bain Capital…but they don't like the Mitt Romney who sent thousands of jobs overseas with the closing of numerous factories throughout the nation. Or that he has flip flopped his positions on abortion and healthcare mandates.  It's complicated. Perhaps too much so for voters right now, and that leads to their confusion, as the polls clearly show.

In November, it will come down to this: Republicans will vote for Mitt. Democrats, African-Americans, Latinos, the gay community and yes, even women will vote for the president. And for those approximate 15 percent of those undecided swing voters? Well, that's complicated.

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• Robert Schlesinger: Barack Obama's Mixed-Bag Week
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