Black and poor women decides Brazil’s president

• 51% of women say they would vote for the former president, compared to 42% for Bolsonaro. Machado’s Lula da Silva leads women in a Datafolha Institute poll.
• Over 2900 face-to-face interviews with voters over 16 were done by the institution.

Brazilian voters will choose a president for the next four years on Sunday, and surveys and experts say women will be essential.

After the first round on October 2, only two candidates will appear on the electronic voting machines: former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers’ PartyLh and current president and Liberal Party candidate Jair Bolsonaro.

Lula da Silva won the first round with 57.2 million votes (48.4%), 1.8 million short of the 50% mark. Bolsonaro won 43.2% of the vote with 51 million votes, and the most notable woman to run, Simone Tebet of the Brazilian Democratic Movement party, placed third with about 5 million votes.

Before the first round, polls suggested Bolsonaro would perform poorly, but they anticipated Lula da Silva would win within the margin of error. In this final round of a very contentious election, some polling institutes are highlighting women’s voting choices.

51.1% of Brazilians and 53% of voters are women. In other words, women outnumber men by 8 million voters.

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This disparity, according to experts, would have been less significant to presidential candidates in prior years. The majority of Bolsonaro’s supporters are still men, according to anthropologist Rosana Pinheiro-Machado, professor in the School of Geography at University College Dublin in Ireland, and up until recently, Brazilian women were less politically active and frequently merely followed their husbands’ voting habits.

“The resistance to Bolsonaro is the women of the poor neighborhoods,” she tells media.

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Polls support Pinheiro-analysis. Machado’s Lula da Silva leads women in a Datafolha Institute poll from October 17–19. Over 2900 face-to-face interviews with voters over 16 were done by the institution in 181 towns nationwide. 51% of women said they would vote for the former president, compared to 42% for Bolsonaro.

Both Bolsonaro and Lula da Silva’s campaigns use notable women to lure women votes, despite some women’s disapproval of Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro’s campaign relies on first lady Michelle Bolsonaro and evangelical pastor Damares Alves, the former Minister of Women, Family, and Human Rights and freshly elected senator. Simone Tebet supports Lula da Silva’s campaign, which has raised the profile of his wife, sociologist Rosângela da Silva (Janja), who coordinates the campaign agenda and interacts with supporters.

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