Occupation: administrative assistant at a Washington think tank
Personal: single
2008 vote: John McCain
Before the presidential debates, Elizabeth Cole was part of Obama's sizable "gender gap," an advantage with female voters that staked him to a solid lead in the Old Dominion.
After the debates, Ms. Cole is now part of the opposite trend: female voters who have turned to Romney down the campaign's homestretch. That change has pushed the former Massachusetts governor into practically a dead heat with Obama for Virginia's 13 electoral votes. Romney is up by 1.5 points in the Oct. 26 RealClearPolitics average for the commonwealth.
She watched parts of the first and third presidential debates and all the vice-presidential one and came away believing Romney better communicated his plans for the next four years.
"I feel like I know more about what his platform is than Obama's," Cole says. "I could hear him articulate more specific plans."
In contrast, she was surprised by how "defensive" both Obama and Vice President Joe Biden appeared.
On Cole's most important issue – improved access to women's health care – she bets that Romney wouldn’t follow through on his promise to repeal the president's health-care law and that Senate Democrats would be able to stymie any attack on women's health care that the more conservative wing of the Republican Party might bring up.
Voting for Romney, "I can live with my guilt on the women's issues," Cole says. "Yes, if something draconian happens ... I will be kicking myself and I will be part of the people who let that happen.
But Cole, who was by no means a strong Obama supporter to begin with, expresses more frustration with both candidates than loyalty to either.
Cole was turned off by the bitterness with which Obama and Romney debated and the fact that "there were many questions that went unanswered, where each side used [a moderator's question] as a launchpad to attack the other.” She adds, “So I don't feel like I got as many answers as I would have liked."
– David Grant, staff writer
