September 04, 2008	Thursday	Ramazan 3, 1429

ST PAUL (Minnesota), Sept 3: Women voters remain un-swayed by the Republican choice of anti-abortion, devout Christian Sarah Palin for vice president, according to a new poll released on Wednesday.White House hopeful John McCain electrified his party’s conservative base by naming Palin, a 44-year-old mother of five and Alaska governor, as his running mate on Friday.

But 52 per cent of voters polled in a survey for the women’s activist group Emily’s List said they would vote for the Democrat ticket of Barack Obama and his VP choice Joseph Biden, against 41 for the Republicans.

“If John McCain thought putting Sarah Palin on the ticket would be a game changer, he may have been right but not in the way he intended,” said the group’s president Ellen Malcolm.

“Senator McCain has seriously misjudged women voters if he thinks he can win them over simply by putting a woman on the ticket,” she said.

“Women voters take their votes seriously and the more they learn about Governor Palin, the less likely they are to support the McCain-Palin ticket.” The poll, carried out by random dialing of 800 women on Sunday and Monday, shows that 50 per cent of women voters felt McCain picked Palin out of political expediency and not because he believes she has the experience to do the job.—AFP