Labor targets undecided female voters via kids

Yacimovich hands out balloons outside a Tel Aviv preschool; Yesh Atid sends Lapid’s wife to talk to voters on the streets.

By LAHAV HARKOV
Yacimovich gives out balloons to preschool kids oin TA 370 (photo credit: LAHAV HARKOV)
Yacimovich gives out balloons to preschool kids oin TA 370
(photo credit: LAHAV HARKOV)
With two days left to the election, Labor leader Shelly Yacimovich on Sunday focused her campaign on female voters by speaking to future voters at the end of their day at preschool.
“Would you like a red balloon or a blue balloon?,” Yacimovich asked a small girl in a stroller, who chose red.
“That shows a good social democratic education,” she quipped.
Yacimovich – together with Stav Shaffir, a leader of the 2011 social protests and No.
8 on the Labor list – presented their plans for promoting gender equality to mothers in Tel Aviv.
The emphasis on female voters comes in light of Labor-sponsored polls indicating some 500,000 women are still undecided, and features the slogan “you can defeat Bibi [Netanyahu],” with the word “you” in the feminine form.
A party spokesman explained that over 20 percent of women have yet to decide who they will vote for, a figure backed by The Jerusalem Post pollster Rafi Smith. The spokesman added that focus groups showed that many women feel a connection with Yacimovich and Labor’s messages.
Several parents pushed their strollers through the throng of photographers so that their children could receive a balloon from Yacimovich herself.
The Labor leader asked a young boy for his name, and rhymed in Hebrew “a balloon for Alon,” when he told her.
A grandmother refused to allow the child she was walking home to take a balloon, saying “your parents would kill me,” but still wished Yacimovich luck.
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Click for full JPost coverage
“Our whole list [for the next Knesset] is made up of feminists,” Yacimovich told the crowd. “We turn to women and say: You can defeat Netanyahu. Stop debating whether to join Labor or not; it is natural for you to vote for Labor led by me. Vote for a woman, and bring your friends and family to vote.”
Yacimovich claimed that if 10% of undecided women – which would make up less than two Knesset seats – voted Labor, she could become prime minister.
She also directed comments at fathers picking up their children from preschool, saying they “need to support a list that will help men and women.”
Activists handed out brochures delineating Labor’s plan for gender equality, which includes increasing maternity leave by a month, free education from age two, legislation further protecting women from domestic violence, canceling employment of teachers as contract workers and other reforms.
Yesh Atid also focused on females, Sunday, sending party leader Yair Lapid’s wife, Lihi, a former columnist focusing on women’s issues, to talk to undecided voters on the street.
On Saturday night, the party held the final conference in a series of campaign events targeted at women.
“Yesh Atid will work to shrink gaps between men and women and give equal opportunities to women to reach equal status and salary,” candidate and Herzliya Mayor Yael German stated.
The party also pointed out that 40% of its top 20 candidates are female.