I spoke with pollster Dotty Lynch this morning about the campaign. Because she was the first pollster to discover the gender gap back in the early 1980s, I decided to start there:

LESLEY: Dotty, you’re the expert on the gender gap. How do you read what’s going on between Hillary and Obama? It’s so interesting: she takes the lion’s share of the WHITE female vote, and yet he’s been siphoning off women who earn more than $50,000 a year.

DOTTY: Obama’s two constituencies — upscale Democrats and African Americans — transcend gender and class. He wins both groups of women, and he wins young women as well. Hillary’s advantage is with older and blue-collar white women who seem to like her economic message and her appeal to kitchen-table issues

LESLEY: So are you saying that for women, gender is not as potent of a force this year? That for women, income and race tie them to a voting block more than their sex?

DOTTY: I think for women and maybe more for men — gender is still a factor, but not the only factor. One of my favorite exit poll findings is the vote in the Utah caucuses where Mitt Romney got 90% of the vote and African Americans are voting over 80% for Obama. Men and women are not as monolithic.

LESLEY: Okay, Mormons and Blacks are monolithic voters. But, looking over all the voters, what I’m wondering is whether the Gender Gap has faded this year, falling behind income as a reason to vote?  That would be interesting — obviously with a woman running. If so, is it because the economy is sagging?

DOTTY: Actually, if you look at the male and female vote, the gap is looking like the Grand Canyon. And if it were only the economy I think Hillary would be doing better. There are other more important factors. Obama is a phenom and has run an exciting, positive campaign. Clinton has run against hope, has lost a lot of races and has not inspired enough women or men. It’s hard to calculate a number for those who are motivated by gender alone. But some women — especially women Hillary’s age and older — do feel more connected to her.

LESLEY: What about men? Are large numbers voting against Hillary BECAUSE she’s a woman?

DOTTY: Men voters are really interesting. No one is quite sure what is motivating them: love of Obama or antipathy toward Hillary. It’s probably a little of each. The sports columnist for the New York Times wrote yesterday that men just relate to Obama as they do to sports figures. In Wisconsin, he got almost 80% of the votes of men under 45. I think many men are uncomfortable with Hillary which makes it doubly easy for them to vote for Obama.

LESLEY: Let me ask about the issue of the press. Hillary says the press corps is biased against her. First, let’s stipulate that there are a lot of WOMEN in the political press corps. Second, let’s just say for this discussion that there’s some truth to her charge. How much of a factor is this — as opposed to her own mistakes is message and tone?

DOTTY: Several objective studies have shown that her coverage has been more negative than Obama’s. One big reason — he is winning and is a bit of a Cinderella candidate, while she has lost 11 races in a row. And some is just a lag time. I think the press took a while to catch its breath and look more closely at Obama. The Clinton camp says, "it will be too late," but those are the breaks. Some is due to the Clinton camp’s bad relations with the press and an arrogance which has dissipated — but only a bit — with her new underdog status.

LESLEY: Well, let’s not leave out the negative effect Bill Clinton has had on his wife’s campaign. And it is true that I am beginning to see more negative stories about Obama — over the weekend, and in today’s paper. We’ll leave that for another interview.

But in terms of press coverage: it seems to me that a candidate today can easily go over the heads of the press corps to get his or her image and message out there. I suspect that the public responds far more to what they see and hear on TV and the internet, than to what their newspapers or TV reporting is telling them. Alas. And woe is me!!

Finally, Dotty, what’s your gut telling you about tomorrow in Ohio and Texas? There doesn’t seem to be a clear sense of momentum — "The Big MO" — or juice for either Hillary or Obama.

DOTTY: I think there could be a split decision — Texas for Obama and Ohio for Clinton, which I don’t think would be good enough for Clinton to hold back the flood gates of Super Delegates who want this race to end soon. My own take is that we now have a great race going on. We have gotten over the early stage of the campaign where attacks on Hillary were seen as sexist and attacks on Obama were viewed as racist. There are now two strong candidates battling it out over their qualifications and issues.

If I were a guy, I would end with a sports metaphor — but I am sure we will hear a lot about knock-outs, extra innings and moving goal posts in the next 48 hours.

LESLEY: Thank you Dotty! Looking forward to talking to you again as the campaign moves forward.