Gallup: Gender gap persists for both camps

President Obama and Mitt Romney hold identical leads over one another among women and men, respectively, according to a Gallup poll released Thursday.

Obama leads 50 percent to 42 over Romney among women, while Romney leads 50 to 42 over Obama among men. That’s essentially unchanged from the same poll released in May.

The gender gap has come back into focus as some Republicans fear Rep. Todd Akin’s (R-Mo.) remark — that in a “legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down” — will reignite a Democratic line of attack from earlier in the cycle that the GOP is looking to “turn back the clock” on women’s issues.

“It's too early to tell if this incident and the resulting fallout will have a long-term impact on the presidential gender gap,” Gallup pollster Frank Newport wrote in his analysis. “But from a broad perspective, Gallup's large sample sizes show a remarkable stability by gender since tracking began in mid-April.”

The gender gap is spread fairly evenly across most demographics, but with two exceptions: whites and Hispanics.

Obama has a massive lead among Hispanics overall, but Hispanic women prefer him by 45 points over Romney compared to Hispanic men, with whom Obama leads by only 25.

Similarly, Romney has a 24 percentage point lead among white men, but only leads by 9 over Obama among white women.

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