By Merrill Goozner

Recent polls show severe slippage for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney among women voters in the wake of a divisive battle about providing contraception that dominated the Republican primaries for the past two months.

But is that all it is? The so-called “gender gap” has been a feature of American politics for most of the past two decades. And the chasm between male and female voters has only grown wider in recent years. 

By Joe Deaux

 

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke won't likely help or hurt President Barack Obama's re-election chances in November.

 

U.S. equities closed slightly lower Tuesday after the Fed downplayed the prospects for more quantitative easing during an election year, which leaves a voter to wonder if QE3's dimmed prospects would batter stocks and thus hurt Obama's re-election chances.

 

By William D. Cohan

 

Getting what should be public information about major Wall Street firms can be maddeningly difficult.

 

Bloomberg News discovered this in its ultimately successful effort to get information on the $1.2 trillion in "secret loans" the Fed doled out during the financial crisis. And I've had no small experience of it myself.

 

By Eric Pianin

Former Gov. Mitt Romney says President Obama should fire three of his cabinet members over skyrocketing fuel prices.  He berates Obama for showering government subsidies on politically well-connected alternative energy companies. And he blasts the president for failing to open up more public land and offshore areas to oil and gas drilling to boost domestic production.

 “In thrall to the environmentalist lobby and its dogmas, the President and the regulatory bodies under his control have taken measures to limit energy exploration and restrict development in ways that sap economic performance, curtail growth, and kill jobs,” Romney said in a policy statement. 

The good news for Mitt Romney is that nobody expects him to lose the Republican nomination for president.

The bad news for Mitt Romney is that the near certainty of his nomination isn't helping how investors in futures based on the election view his chances. They think he's got a big selling job ahead.

Trading on the election on Intrade.com, the Irish trading site that lets you take positions for or against just about everything, gives Romney only a 37% chance of winning the election. That's down slightly from the last time we looked at Intrade's trading trends.

President Obama has a 60.3% change of winning re-election. That probability has changed little in the last six weeks.  

By Eric Pianin

Maybe now we know why Newt Gingrich started charging supporters who want a picture of the former House speaker.

Gingrich revealed earlier this week that he was all but abandoning traditional campaigning around the country. Instead, he will use social media and phone calls to uncommitted GOP national delegates to try to stay in the game until the August GOP convention in Tampa. Oh, and by the way, the few supporters still eager to pose with him for a photo now must pay $50 per pose. His campaign is $1.6 million in debt. 

By Jonathan D. Salant

 

Some secret donors who gave money to groups that paid for millions of dollars in attack ads during the 2010 midterm elections are becoming public.

 

Chevron (CVX), an oil and gas company; Merck (MRK), a drug maker; and the American Petroleum Institute are among the entities that have disclosed through corporate filings or Internal Revenue Service reports their donations to politically active groups that are growing in influence.

 

By Rick Newman

 

There's some kind of help you don't really want.

 

The big oil companies have some stalwart protectors on Capitol Hill who make sure their longstanding tax breaks aren't threatened. Just recently, they helped kill a vote to eliminate subsidies that add up to a little more than $2 billion per year for five big oil companies. Given rising gas prices and the growing need to tackle the national debt, that's a powerful display of legislative muscle.