Data | How do men and women vote in Mexico? They go to the right, they don't

Mexico will almost certainly have its first female president after the elections on June 2: two are the best positioned candidates, the ruling party Claudia Sheinbaum and the opposition Xóchitl Gálvez. But how do men and women in Mexico vote? Below we analyze his vote and the change in his ideology.

A first analysis by EL PAÍS reveals that men have moved to the right of women in recent years. Since 2015, a general leftward movement has been observed – which has led all candidates to seek to occupy that space – but that trend seems to have been truncated with men.

The above data comes from the Latinobarómetro, an opinion survey that measures changes in political behavior in 18 Latin American countries since 1995. One of its questions consists of asking respondents to define their ideology, with a scale where 0 is left and 10 is left. right. In the last two decades, Mexico has remained in the center, on average, but with ups and downs and a certain tendency towards leftism.

The PAN members Vicente Fox (2000-2006) and Felipe Calderón (2006-2012) were elected by an electorate on average more inclined towards the center-right. Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018) won the elections with voters who were still very focused, but from the first years of his Administration, measurements show a realignment towards the left of Mexicans, whether men or women. This turn also coincides with the movement that emerged after the disappearance of the Ayotzinapa students.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018-2024) won with an electorate more identified, for the first time in a presidential election, with the center-left. This trend towards progressivism has increased during the current Government. “There is a coincidence of people's identities with the parties that govern at that time, although apparently there are no such clear ideological proposals,” says former deputy Martha Tagle.

More than 99 million people are called to the polls. Of them, 52% are women, and as Tagle recalls, they also participate more. In the 2018 presidential elections, 66% of women voted and only 58% of men, according to the INE. “The fact of having two candidates with real possibilities of winning the presidency can further mobilize women's participation,” Tagle anticipates.

We see the ideological gap that seems to open since 2020 between men and women in all age groups. As can be seen in the following graphs, the change is less clear between the young (15 to 25 years old) and the elderly (61 or older), who have continued their trajectory to the left. But it is clear in the groups of 25-40 years and 40-59 years. There, women continue to define themselves as more left-wing than ever, but men have taken a clear step to the right.

The historian Denisse Cejudo points out that a hypothesis to explain the change is the rise of feminist mobilizations, their acceptance and their resistance. “We are seeing and experiencing it in the universities,” says the gender specialist. “There is a struggle for political space between feminist agendas and some men who feel dispossessed and who have embraced very basic and simplistic patriarchal discourses, such as 'go back to the kitchen,'” she says.

The phenomenon has been reflected in other countries. The political gender gap has widened between young men and women in countries such as Germany, Korea, the United States and the United Kingdom, with men more receptive to conservative and far-right speeches and women more convinced of progressivism, according to a study from the Financial Times published this year.

Cejudo comments that the effect was also visible in the elections that gave victory to Javier Milei in Argentina and other Latin American countries. “What we see in the Mexican case is a conservative society, but one that has not yet brought those discourses to the surface, although I think that is where we are going,” he points out. The specialist affirms that gender is emerging as a determining factor in the elections of the coming years.

Cejudo points out that it is a recent phenomenon. In the mid-1950s, when women voted for the first time, there was a fear among politicians that the female vote would lean more toward the conservatism of the National Action Party (PAN) because they were seen as housewives, those who those who attended church and those who had more traditional views of family. That changed when women joined the labor market, had access to contraceptive methods and gained space in the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the state party. Towards the end of the eighties, the left had the first outlines of a women's agenda, but it was a minority force. In 2000, women had more conservative positions than men in almost all age groups, according to Latinobarómetro.

Forecasts for 2024

The realignment towards the center-left that has been observed in the last decade explains, perhaps, the discourses and strategies that have emerged in the race. “When the right arrives, rights end,” said Sheinbaum, who defines herself as a left-wing woman, in the first week of the campaign. Gálvez signed a controversial “blood pact” in one of his first acts to commit to maintaining social programs. “I am a center-left woman,” said the opponent in an interview with EL PAÍS published in February.

Political scientist Enrique Gutiérrez points out that the PRI defines itself in its statutes as social democratic and center-left, the same case as its allies from the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and the Citizen Movement, the only force that does not compete in alliance. “There has been a shift of practically all parties towards the center-left,” he says. The academic comments that the desire to position oneself where the majority of voters are can lead to their ideological identities becoming blurred. “If they all represent the same thing, then what differentiates them?” he asks.

Ideology is not usually seen as a determining factor for voting in Mexico, partly because other factors mediate and because parties do not usually position themselves clearly or define themselves in one way and act in another. “From what is said to what is done there is a big difference,” says Cejudo. The PRI, the PAN and the PRD were old rivals and have had marked historical differences, but today they are allies. Morena has joined forces with the Green Party, which has previously supported the PAN and the PRI.

This helps explain why the ideological differences between men and women are not reflected in their electoral preferences. In fact, as the graph shows, the support for Sheinbaum, Gálvez and Jorge Álvarez Máynez is barely distinguished by gender. Data from the pollster Áltica, with 5,000 interviews since January 2024, say that Sheinbaum has around 55% of the vote among men and 56% among women, that is, an essentially identical result.

Cejudo points out that the parties have been indefinite and inconsistent when they have sought the female vote. Sheinbaum has defined herself as a feminist, but she and López Obrador have had a complicated relationship with the feminist movement. Gálvez has appealed to women, but has not established a clear position regarding abortion and has struggled to distance herself from some PAN positions, says the specialist. “There is a feeling of political orphanhood among many women,” she says.

“The proposals of both candidates fall into commonplaces, there is nothing too new,” Tagle agrees. The former legislator and founder of Movimiento Ciudadano recognizes that the electoral strategists of her party proposed the nomination of a man to differentiate themselves from the two candidates. “That he was the new one, that he was the young one and that he was a man were the three differentiators they put on the table,” she says.

This is how the ephemeral candidacy of Samuel García was promoted, in a line that continued with Álvarez Máynez. Tagle, who has been critical of the strategy, points out that the claim of the party's feminists is that the programmatic commitment of the formation did not correspond to the profiles chosen for the candidacies, in many cases defined by more pragmatic criteria. Máynez, who has focused her campaign on universities, performs best among younger people.

The voting differences are clearer when we look at age. The youngest prefer Sheinbaum by a larger margin, while Gálvez gains ground as the age of the voters increases.

Gutiérrez emphasizes that historically young people tend to be more inclined to political proposals that offer change. The specialist remembers the support of young people for Fox's candidacy or Peña Nieto's efforts to promote himself as “the new PRI.” However, that could have changed: “It seems that young people are now betting on continuity and not so much on a project of rupture,” he points out.

One hypothesis of the specialist is that the labels of the PRI and the PAN, the traditional parties, have made it difficult for Gálvez to present himself as an option for change and that Morena has opened more spaces of representation to those who had been relegated, such as the LGTB community. There are almost 26.5 million voters between 18 and 29 years old, more than a quarter of the nominal list, although in 2018 they voted less. “It's not that young people don't want to participate, it's that many times politics in Mexico smells old, they don't see themselves represented,” says Gutiérrez.

Finally, it is relevant to look at the double crossing: voting by gender and age.

Men and women have very similar voting intentions, in total terms, but when we separate them into young and old, a double pattern emerges. Sheinbaum has more support from older men and younger women; and with Gálvez it happens just the opposite, the opponent does somewhat better among young men and older women. In other words: among young women, Sheinbaum stands out a lot, but among older women Sheinbaum and Gálvez are close to a tie.

The big problem for Gálvez is that Sheinbaum has an advantage in practically all the polls that have come out in this electoral process. Although the elections are not yet decided, a prediction by EL PAÍS based on demographic studies puts the former head of Government as a firm favorite, with an 89% chance of winning. The opponent retains one option out of ten to win by surprise.

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