If Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has any hope of securing a second term, she needs more female support and fast. However, a man famous for his macho swagger showed no concrete strategy to achieve him.

Three months before the elections, some polls show this only one in five women will vote for the former army captainwho speaks hard, is in favor of guns and rides a motorcycle.

If that holds true on October 2, Bolsonaro could lose outright to his nemesis, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. there is no need for a second round. Almost half of Brazilian women say she will vote for the president’s opponent.

More than half of the women interviewed say so they would never vote for the far-right leaderregardless of social class, which has been a traditional indicator of voting preferences.

Poll expert Antonio Lavareda said Bolsonaro has no chance of winning unless he can win more women. “There is a huge rejection among them. Even among those who haven’t made their choice yet, it’s less likely their choice,” he said in a telephone interview.

Four years ago

It’s a very different situation from 2018. Days before the legislator’s victory, once marginal four years ago, polls showed that women split almost equally between Bolsonaro and his left-wing opponent, former mayor of São Paulo.

This is despite Bolsonaro’s quip about having a daughter in a moment of weakness and his comment to a fellow legislator who she was too ugly to be raped. Many women, especially those from higher social classes, have supported her campaign.

Since, Bolsonaro has lost female support. This is partly due to her handling of the pandemic and her insistence on questioning the efficacy of vaccines, even strictly opposing their use among children, said Esther Solano, a sociologist at the Federal University of São Paulo.

The president is not yet vaccinated against COVID-19 and a country with a proud tradition of successful vaccination campaigns has recorded the second highest number of deaths from COVID-19 in the world.

“Women are always shocked by the idea of ​​care, because it is the woman who cares. The fact that Bolsonaro did not take care of people during the pandemic it had a much more negative impact among the female population, ” explained Solano, who conducted polls among potential Bolsonaro voters.

Overall, he said, four years of Bolsonaro’s “aggressive tone” have diminished his support.

“The shows a very toxic type of masculinity, very strong, very violent. Just as there are men who have been fascinated by this type of masculinity, the aggressive man who speaks politically incorrectly, who is intolerant, who shows some strength, many women feel attacked by this, ” she added.

Bolsonaro has also had to contend with the fastest inflation in nearly two decades, as have other leaders around the world.

what’s coming

Geisa Rodrigues dos Santos lives in a low-income community in Rio de Janeiro and relies heavily on social programs to feed her three children. Brazil’s generous pandemic wellness program has been halted and house cleaning now he longs for the Lula governmentwhich produced an emerging middle class between 2003 and 2010.

He didn’t vote in 2018, but he now intends to vote for Lula.

“Back then, during the pandemic, almsgiving worked. They saved a lot of mothers,” said dos Santos, 35. “Now I spend those 400 reais ($ 77) in the supermarket and inflation eats a lot. In Lula’s time, we ate”.

In Bolsonaro’s camp there is the recognition of his disadvantage among women, as well as the hope that he will win over many of the roughly one-third of women who, according to polls, remain undecided. What does not exist is an agreement on how to adapt the course.

Analysts have speculated that Bolsonaro’s campaign could turn to his wife Michelle, 40, for public appearances and TV commercials. An evangelical Christian, he is fluent in sign language and personifies the caring housewife who can smooth out Bolsonaro’s rough edges and attract potential female voters, Solano said.

The first lady was supposed to record television commercials earlier this month, but that didn’t happen, according to two Bolsonaro ministers and two senators who are close advisers to the president.

They told the Associated Press that the ads were dismissed because the president’s lawmaker’s children are divided on which direction it should take: double your inflammatory speech strategy 2018 or tone down your impertinence as a means of approach. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the campaign strategy.

The allies also urged Bolsonaro to choose a running mate, such as Tereza Cristina, his former agriculture minister, according to the same four officials. Instead, he said he will choose a military comrade, General Walter Braga Netto, adviser to the president. He may still change his mind before the August deadline, though it seems increasingly unlikely, his allies at the AP said.

Cristina was one of three female cabinet ministers during Bolsonaro’s first three years in power, compared to more than 20 men. After she and other ministers stepped down this year so they could run for other posts, Bolsonaro’s choices for replacements left only one woman in the cabinet.

Bolsonaro, for his part, repeated it don’t believe the polls claiming that their constituents do not answer to them.

His direct attempts to reach female voters have been hesitant. On International Women’s Day in March, she said that women “are fundamentally integrated into society” and on April 12 he said his government did 63 things for them, without specifying what they were. The presidential palace did not respond to repeated emails from the AP asking for details of such actions.

Agency AP

PB