Flanked by her mother and daughter, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton sought on Saturday to shore up votes among women whose support is turning more fluid in the tightening U.S. presidential race.Less than two weeks before voting begins in the state-by-state process to select party candidates, the New York senator who would be the nation's first female president touted her plans to expand paid family leave and boost child-care funding to help working mothers. "We can do a better job in America in supporting families," Clinton told about 120 voters in the lobby of the Young Women's Christian Association offices in Manchester, New Hampshire, as her 27-year-old daughter, Chelsea, and her 88-year-old mother, Dorothy Rodham, sat in chairs beside her.
National polls have shown Clinton holding a strong lead among women over Democratic rival Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, but surveys in the early-voting states of New Hampshire and Iowa are more volatile.
A Washington Post/ABC News poll published on Wednesday showed Clinton and Obama in a statistical dead heat among women who plan to attend Iowa's January 3 caucuses, which will kick off the nomination process for the November 2008 election.
In New Hampshire, whose January 8 primary vote is the second big nomination contest in the race for the White House, a CNN/WMUR poll this week showed Clinton leading Obama 42 percent to 25 percent among women -- roughly unchanged from November. But just a week earlier, the same pollsters said Clinton's support among women had collapsed in New Hampshire when they found that from December 6 to December 10 her support narrowed to 33 percent while Obama's support among women rose to 28 percent.