José Coelho/EPA
Presidential candidate António José Seguro (L) kisses his wife Margarida Maldonado Freitas (C) after advancing to the second round of the presidential elections.
There was a transfer of support among women who were going to vote for João Cotrim Figueiredo. Seguro also won over older voters, the intermediate segment (with a small margin) and those with higher education.
António José Seguro the first round of the presidential elections with a margin considered comfortable. But how? Who were the 31.1% who voted for the candidate who, at the beginning of the race, was not even in the top 3 favorites to succeed Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa?
Seguro won in the last days of the campaign, thanks to a decisive combination: many voters only made their decision in the last week, and a low rejection rate made him the least bad candidate for many of them.
And there was another determining factor for Seguro’s victory: a transfer of support among women who, until very close to election day, were going to vote for João Cotrim Figueiredopoints out Henrique Oliveira, professor at the Department of Mathematics and coordinator of a survey aggregator at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), in analysis for .
The data points to a first round marked by volatility. According to the SIC and TVI exit poll, carried out by GfK-Metris and Pitagorica, around one in three Portuguese people decided their vote in the last week of the campaign. It is precisely thanks to these last-minute undecideds that Seguro will have consolidated his advantage — he will have collected close to 40% of the votes of those who decided at the end. André Ventura received only 14% of these voters, while Cotrim de Figueiredo received 19%.
“Cotrim de Figueiredo was experiencing a great moment of growth (…) there were effects there due to the attacks he suffered and the statements he also preferred, namely about abortion. And, therefore, this effect could have been felt”, considers the professor.
Until election night, Seguro had only led one poll and the Pythagorean tracking poll. But he won with more than 400 thousand votes difference compared to André Ventura.
And what does the gender segmentation of the vote say? Among women, Seguro had 38% — twice as much as Ventura (19%) and more than twice as much as Cotrim (16%). Among voters over 65, Seguro stood out again with 37%, far surpassing Ventura (18%) and leaving Cotrim far behind (10%). Both segments of the electorate tend to participate more in elections.
On the track from 18 to 34 years oldSeguro reached 30%, while Ventura was at 20%. First place in this group went to Cotrim de Figueiredo, with 33%, which was already expected. In this same age group, Gouveia e Melo and Marques Mendes appear much lower, with 6% each.
In the intermediate segment, between 35 and 64 years oldSeguro maintained the lead with 31%, but Ventura came closer with 27%.
In terms of education, it was among voters with primary and secondary education that Ventura beat Seguro, albeit by short margins: 34% against 32% in primary education and 29% against 26% in secondary education. In contrast, Among those with higher education, Seguro led with 38%while Ventura got 11%, practically at the level of Gouveia e Melo and Marques Mendes.
