Women like Hillary; men like Fred

Yet for all that support, both candidates are showing early vulnerabilities wooing voters of the opposite sex.

Thompson, the former Tennessee senator and tough-guy actor on television’s “Law and Order,” gets 68 percent of his support from males as he edges toward a run for the GOP presidential nomination, far more than other hopefuls, according to recent Associated Press-Ipsos polling. While he and front-runner Rudy Giuliani each draw nearly a quarter of the Republican male vote, he significantly trails his chief rivals among women.

“He seems to be closer to the conservative that I am,” said Richard Bussa, 60, a Thompson supporter and retired newspaper writer from Minford, Ohio. “Playing on the police shows he’s on, he does present a hard-nosed, law-and-order-type guy.”

On the Democratic side, Clinton is showing a mirror-image weakness, though one less stark than Thompson’s.

The New York senator and former first lady gets 63 percent of her support from women and has more than twice the female backing of her nearest rival, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., in AP-Ipsos surveys. She has only a slender lead among men, who are splitting their allegiances about evenly among her, Obama and former Vice President Al Gore, who has not said he will run.

“She’s competent, she’s tough,” said Diana Roberts, 54, a teacher from Edison, N.J. “And I think it’s time” for a woman to be president.

These patterns make Clinton and Thompson formidable forces within their parties. A slight majority of GOP voters are men, who tend to be more conservative than women, while just over half of Democratic voters are female, according to figures from recent national elections.