Opinion – Cecilia Machado: The next president of Brazil will be decided by the female electorate

In recent weeks, several polls of voting intentions for the presidential elections have been released. Comparing and interpreting each new result is no simple task: there are differences in the samples, in the interview questionnaires, or even in the way information is collected, whether over the phone or in face-to-face interviews. But, despite the differences, it is possible to trace a recurring pattern in the results: the gender gap in voting intentions for candidate Jair Bolsonaro.

According to the latest Datafolha poll, 30% of men and 29% of women declare an intention to vote for Lula, a gender gap of 1 percentage point, while 29% of men and 18% of women declare an intention to vote for Lula. Bolsonaro, a gender gap of 11 percentage points (pp). The gender gap in voting intentions is also present in the latest polls by Modal Mais (17.9 pp), Instituto Paraná (11.5 pp), Poderdata (8 pp), BGT (11 pp), Genial (11 pp) and Ipespe (12 pp).

If on the one hand it is evident that women are less inclined to vote for Bolsonaro, it is also true that they are part of a more indecisive electorate: according to Datafolha, 25% of men and 39% of women do not know who they will vote for. The numbers indicate that the gender gap in voting intentions – whether for Bolsonaro or in the uncertainty of the choice – is a novelty that should be explored in the campaigns of the main presidential candidates.

The gender gap in voting intentions is a recent phenomenon in Brazilian democracy. Since 1989, the first election after the country’s redemocratization, all major presidential candidates have received similar support across genders. Even in elections disputed by women candidates, as in the two victories of Dilma Rousseff. But in 2018, a survey carried out by Datafolha on the eve of the second round (10/25/18) indicated that 55% of men and 42% of women would vote for Bolsonaro, a gap of 13 percentage points. That year, Bolsonaro took the elections due to the advantage of votes he had in the South and Southeast, despite the gender gap.

What then explains this new attitude of the Brazilian female electorate? Had women’s lesser interest in politics made them indecisive? Or is there a greater demand from women for assistance policies – a banner traditionally associated with the leftist agenda?

None of these hypotheses is convincing: today, women are the majority of the electorate and turn out to be at the polls in greater proportion than men. In addition, women’s voting for left-wing parties occurs in all income and education strata, and assistance policies have been practiced by governments from the most varied ideological spectrums, such as Auxílio Brasil in the current government. Much more interesting is the perspective presented by Cascio and Shenhav in “A Century of the American Women Voter.”

For them, it was not the women who changed. But the political parties and the platform of their candidates, with a strong position on women’s rights and gender guidelines. In 1980, the American Republican Party, under Reagan, embraced a series of anti-abortion positions and against the constitutional clause of equal rights, opening the gender gap in the voting intentions of American democracy.

Here in Brazil, left and right have never had markedly antagonistic positions regarding the role of women in society. On the contrary, the total absence of government planning in agendas aimed at the female electorate over the last few decades is consistent with a voting profile that is independent of gender. Several sensitive topics, such as abortion or shared parental leave, are topics not named by any candidate in the recent past. Until 2018, Bolsonaro started a frankly open discussion in the country about how he sees the role of women in society, becoming largely responsible for the gender gap in voting intentions that emerged in Brazil.

In 2022 the scenario will be different.

The conquest of the female electorate became the key to victory, in a polarized and disputed vote-by-vote election. There is little doubt that this time the next president of Brazil will be decided by the female electorate.