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"We&amp;amp;#8217;re supposed to believe that every vote is equal, but the women&amp;amp;#8217;s vote in the January 3 Iowa caucus is more valuable than anyone else&amp;amp;#8217;s. Because Iowa is the nation&amp;amp;#8217;s earliest primary, voters there will be the first to pick presidential winners and losers, setting the &amp;amp;#8220;Big Mo&amp;amp;#8221; in play. And this year&amp;amp;#8217;s speeded-up campaign schedule makes Iowans even more powerful than usual. Only five days after Iowa, the candidates will slingshot to New Hampshire for the January 8 primary, which means Granite Staters will be casting their votes with the Iowa results still fresh in their minds. And it&amp;amp;#8217;s the women of Iowa who will decide what those results will be. In 2004, more than half of the caucus voters were women. This year, the Des Moines Register estimates that a whopping 62 percent of Democratic caucus goers will be women . Right now, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are neck-and-neck among women, although Clinton attracts older females while younger women, who don&amp;amp;#8217;t vote as regularly, tend to favor Obama. On the Republican side, Iowa women have catapulted long-shot candidate Mike Huckabee into front-runner position. His last-minute surge came from socially conservative women who like the former Baptist minister&amp;amp;#8217;s folksy appeal. I dislike the choices Iowan women are making and I&amp;amp;#8217;m jealous they have &amp;amp;#8220;first dibs&amp;amp;#8221; on the election. As a Virginia resident my place on the primary calendar is long after Iowa, New Hampshire and even Tsunami Tuesday. Just like the rest of the country, I don&amp;amp;#8217;t have any choice but to watch what those women in Iowa do on Thursday&amp;amp;#8212;which seems to me to make their votes a little more than equal. &amp;amp;#8212;Amanda"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/sex-love-life/blogs/glamocracy/2008/01/women-of-iowa-im-jealous>