CNN poll:
In an election year when the politics of gender have been front and center, voters are largely agreed that they won't be swayed by the gender of any vice presidential selection. Almost 9 in 10 say that if Trump or Clinton were to choose a woman as their running mate, it wouldn't impact their vote either way.
Of course, people could be lying to pollsters. And I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard “I have no problem with two women on a ticket, but other people do!”
But fact is, there’s no evidence of any significant hit to picking a woman VP. According to the poll, 10 percent would be less likely to vote for her if she chose a woman VP, and 4 percent would be more likely. The difference? A measly 6 points.
And that “less” and “more” formulation is kinda bullshit anyway. CNN didn’t break down partisan crosstabs for that question, so for all we know, it’s Republicans saying they’d be “less likely to vote for her” but they wouldn’t vote for her anyway! And if Democrats would be “more likely” to vote for her, how significant is that if they were already going to vote for her in the first place?
And that’s the nut of it. Who is this mythical voter who is fine with voting for a woman president, especially someone with negatives as high as Hillary Clinton’s, but a female running mate would be going just too far? And saying, “It’s not me, but there are others”—isn’t an answer.