Female voters and Bachelet

Mauricio Morales Quiroga, “La primera mujer presidenta de Chile: ¿Qué explicó el triunfo de Michelle Bachelet en las elecciones de 2005-2006?” Latin American Research Review 43, 1 (2008): 7-32.

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ABSTRACT: For the first time in Chile, a woman triumphed in the presidential elections. We suggest that Bachelet's victory is explained, primarily, by her personal attributes. Chileans perceived her as the most trustworthy candidate and as one they could relate to, and they valued her qualifications as a possible governor. Furthermore, she was helped by a political and economic environment derived from her association with President Ricardo Lagos and the positive economic growth that Chile experienced during his administration. A crucial theme that spans the breadth of the article is that of "gender solidarity," which maintains that female support was a determinant in Bachelet's triumph. This is corroborated by polls on voting intentions and also by the final, municipal-level electoral results.

The idea that women—and especially poor women who are heads of households—were a determinant in Michelle Bachelet’s victory is not necessarily so earth shattering, though this article does a very nice job of using voting data to do a quantitative study of who voted for her.

For me, the more intriguing issue is to think about the implications. In particular, for the next LASA I will (hopefully) be on a panel dedicated to Chilean politics (in addition to the workshop on blogging) and I plan on doing a paper about the slow crumbling of the Concertación. Since it is well over a year away, exactly how I will approach this remains remains very much in the tentative stage.

In the context of this article, what occurs to me is that if women, and especially poor women, vaulted Bachelet into the presidency, then failing to pass legislation to help that constituency would foster quite a backlash. Many Bachelet supporters may be ambivalent about the Concertación, but support it because they like her personally. So if she doesn’t perform, then they reject both her as president and the coalition.