Romney losing women, contraception debate hurt

Funny, the GOP was so excited to debate this issue to death, as wash their leader Rush Limbaugh.  Seems it backfired. USA Today:

In the fifth Swing States survey taken since last fall, Obama leads Republican front-runner Mitt Romney 51%-42% among registered voters just a month after the president had trailed him by two percentage points.

The biggest change came among women under 50. In mid-February, just under half of those voters supported Obama. Now more than six in 10 do while Romney's support among them has dropped by 14 points, to 30%. The president leads him 2-1 in this group.

Romney's main advantage is among men 50 and older, swamping Obama 56%-38%.

Republicans' traditional strength among men "won't be good enough if we're losing women by nine points or 10 points," says Sara Taylor Fagen, a Republican strategist and former political adviser to President George W. Bush. "The focus on contraception has not been a good one for us … and Republicans have unfairly taken on water on this issue."

New poll shows Romney highly unpopular

Overwhelming majority of Americans want out of Afghanistan

Who exactly are the people who still support the war in Afghanistan? There is no winning there though it's been that way for years. At this point the only people supporting it are the defense contractors and senior brass who get to play live war games. Spending precious tax dollars on an un-winnable war was a bad idea before and it's only worse now. The time to declare victory and move on is long gone, so let's just move on at this point.

Support for the war in Afghanistan is slipping fast, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll released Monday. More than two-thirds of those surveyed, 69 percent, think the United States should no longer be fighting, a 16 percent jump from just four months ago.

A similar number, 68 percent, say the war effort is going either "very badly" or "somewhat badly," a big increase from 42 percent in the last poll in November.

Nearly half of Americans think the timetable for pulling U.S troops out of Afghanistan should be moved up. Forty-four percent say U.S. forces should leave before the Obama administration's planned withdrawal by the end of 2014, while 33 percent say the U.S. should stick to the current schedule. Seventeen percent say the U.S. should stay "as long as it takes"; 3 percent say the troops should come home now.

Gallup confirms that unemployed dropped again last month

What's even more important is that the under-employment rate is coming down as well. The numbers aren't earth shattering, but any improvement is positive news. Gallup:

The U.S. government will report its March unemployment rate on Friday, April 6. It will be based largely on mid-month reference week conditions. At 8.8%, Gallup's mid-March unadjusted unemployment rate is down by 0.3 points from 9.1% in February. This suggests that "real" unemployment decreased in March. Of course, Gallup's unadjusted rate in February was substantially higher than the government's unadjusted 8.7% rate.

The 0.3-percentage-point decline in mid-March moderates the 0.5-point increase Gallup found in February, but it still leaves the mid-month rate higher than the 8.6% in January. A year ago, Gallup recorded a similar decline in the March unemployment rate of 0.4 points, as it fell to 9.9% in March from 10.3% in February. The percentage of Americans working part time but wanting full-time work also declined in mid-March, to 9.8% from 10.0% in February. While the percentage of unemployed Americans is lower than it was a year ago, the percentage of Americans working part-time but seeking full-time work in mid-March is higher than the 9.2% of March 2011.

Note that Gallup's unemployment numbers for last month are higher than the US government's numbers. The explanation is complicated, but you can click through to Gallup's explanation. In any case, both the USG and Gallup both show unemployment dropped, which is good news.