An All-Out Battle for Women's Votes Begins

"Everyone wants to see themselves reflected in leadership," said Kellyanne Conway, a Republican who heads the Polling Company. "In politics, familiarity breeds content, not contempt."

At the Democratic convention in Denver this week, Clinton made an impassioned plea for her supporters to support Obama this November. Now McCain's choice of Palin makes it likely that Obama will call on Clinton even more, setting the stage for a full-scale battle for the women's vote just as the Democratic Party hoped it had made progress locking it down.

Senior Clinton advisers said there had always been one big card that McCain could play to exploit the rift between Clinton and Obama supporters -- and McCain played it.

Howard Wolfson, Clinton's former communications director, said Palin could peel away some votes from Obama and Biden. "Both campaigns seemed to have decided that Hillary Clinton's 18 million voters represent a key swing bloc in this election -- both Barack Obama's speech and John McCain's pick were at least partially aimed at them," Wolfson said in an e-mail. "The fact that Palin is pro-life and pro-gun will be a block for many of Senator Clinton's supporters -- but not all. And it will raise the question for many why Senator Obama didn't pick Senator Clinton as his running mate."

Interviews with women who supported Clinton suggested that the fact that McCain picked someone as conservative as Palin will be reluctant to vote for McCain, even for those who have been flirting for months with the idea of defecting to the GOP ticket.

Amilyn Lanning, who knocked on doors for Clinton near her home in Zionsville, Pa., before her state's primary, was intrigued by the idea of Palin until she did some research and concluded that she is "a cookie-cutter Republican."

"She's a little too conservative. She's very much pro-life. I don't think she's supportive of gay rights" said Lanning, who is gay and a lifelong Democrat. "It was a nice appeal, but having her versus someone like Clinton just doesn't hold any water for me."

Even Conway emphasized that women do not vote simply on gender, and Democrats such as Sen. Barbara Boxer (Calif.) argued that McCain would have been better off tapping one of his Senate colleagues.

"Senator McCain had so many other options if he wanted to put a woman on his ticket, such as Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison or Senator Olympia Snowe -- they would have been an appropriate choice compared to this dangerous choice," Boxer said in a statement, adding that when it came to Palin, "The only similarity between her and Hillary Clinton is that they are both women. On the issues, they could not be further apart."

Palin herself framed her selection in historic terms yesterday, noting it came "88 years almost to the day after the women of America first gained the right to vote," and she seemed to go out of her way to pay homage to Clinton, while declaring that she would carry on her quest to become the first woman elected to national office.

"It was rightly noted in Denver this week that Hillary left 18 million cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling in America," she told the crowd. "But it turns out the women of America aren't finished yet, and we can shatter that glass ceiling once and for all."

For one former Clinton supporter at least, the message hit home, and she said she will be voting for McCain. Sherry Morrison, 46, a medical billing executive who lives in Roanoke, called Palin's speech "a wink and a nod to the Hillary supporters. It was, 'Hey, if the Democrats are too stupid to break that glass ceiling, we will do it for them.' "

Staff writer Krissah Williams Thompson and polling analyst Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.