It was a sad day for 13-year-old girls everywhere when David Cook’s spiky hair victory danced… It was a sad day for 13-year-old girls everywhere when David Cook’s spiky hair victory danced across the stage into American Idol-hood last week.

Yes, despite his nauseatingly wholesome rendition of Neil Diamond’s “America” and calculated boy-next-door appeal, (supposed) Idol-frontrunner David Archuleta lost to the tightly clad rocker after a record-breaking number of votes were dialed and texted in Cook’s favor.

What, then, was the secret to Cook’s success? What force was strong enough to deter even the seemingly indomitable preteen demographic, rabid, Jonas-brother-loving psychos that they are?

Hint: It’s also the same group that was a deciding factor in the 2006 mid-term elections and a leading influence in politics for the last 24 years: middle-aged women.

Though the female demographic as a whole has outvoted men consistently since the 1984 presidential election, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, it is the older-than-30 crowd that demonstrated the largest gender gap.

Generally a representative (though, admittedly stereotypical) middle-aged American woman cares about equality in the workplace and being independent (also, terrible music like Bon Jovi). These are, after all, the women who listened to their mothers’ and grandmothers’ stories of being denied the right to vote, the women who witnessed the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court and the passage of landmark legislation like Title IX and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Yet according to a Women’s Donor Network nationwide survey, when voting in the 2006 mid-term elections, women felt that the issues of the war in Iraq, health care and the economy were most important, and typically female-championed issues like women’s equality and abortion were rated as much less important.

Despite these gender-neutral interests, women do, however, continue to feel that placing fellow women in positions of power is a top priority. According to the WDN poll, 56 percent of women felt strongly about the importance of the first woman Speaker of the House.

Similarly, in the current Democratic primary, a significant portion of women are pushing their support in the direction of Sen. Hillary Clinton, hoping for that final equalizer: a female president.

With what looks like Clinton’s impending political doom, however, there is a lingering question about where those votes will go.

According to a March Gallup poll, 28 percent of Clinton supporters – the majority of these older women – would vote for Sen. John McCain if Sen. Barack Obama is the nominee.

Frankly, this makes no sense, especially when you take into account that Obama and Clinton’s positions on most policies are near identical.

Really, I think there are only two possible explanations for this kind of behavior:

First, perhaps these results stem from the bitterness of losing, the typical if-I-can’t-have-it-no-one-can philosophy. The second possibility is that the Clintonites were always planning on voting for the Democratic candidate (whomever it should be), but were using the poll as a fear-tactic, hoping to scare middle-of-the-roaders back to Hillary.

(There is a third option that I’ve optimistically chosen to disregard, which is, of course, plain old stupidity).

If the first option is correct, I am still left wondering what is so drastically different about Clinton from Obama that it would prompt someone to vote for the opposing party, and once again, I keep coming back to the gender card.

Hillary supporters were outraged, for example, when The National Abortion Rights Action League’s Pro-Choice America political action committee, or NARAL, endorsed Barack Obama and not Clinton.

After all, how could Obama, a man, possibly represent the interests of women and, oh my goodness, after a move like this they will never donate to that anti-feminist NARAL again! In actuality, Obama has the same views on abortions as Clinton, so much so that the candidates had to argue over who voted in support of pro-choice legislation more often rather than over the policy itself.

With no real reason to differentiate the two candidates, it seems that these poll results and other I’ll-vote-for-McCain ultimatums made by Clinton supporters (and I acknowledge that not all of these supporters are feminists or even women) are a collaborative statement of defiance, an electoral middle finger that says: If you do not support Clinton, you are not a true advocate for women’s rights. Support Obama, and you might as well be excitedly burning copies of the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments in your King Henry VIII-poster-riddled basement.

It’s a passionate message that will certainly pack a punch in November, but is it really in the best interest of those Clinton supporters?

Unless they want another over-extended stay in Iraq and other Republican shenanigans, the answer is a resounding “no.”

E-mail Molly at [email protected].