During the 2013 elections, 11 percent of the country’s women voters had voted differently from men. In the 2018 elections, this increased to 18 percent, including in areas where women are often believed to vote for whoever they are told to vote for by men.
According to the findings by FAFEN, the largest percentage difference in this context was found in KP and Sindh. Some 23 percent of women voters in KP and 21 percent in Sindh cast their ballot for a party that was not supported by the men of their areas. These are telling numbers, connoting women who deviated from voting for parties preferred by male voters. The corresponding number for the Punjab was 15 percent.
FAFEN’s findings suggest that in polling stations in Islamabad, where PTI won, the majority of pro-PTI voters were men. Same was the case for the polling stations where PPP had won. However, at the polling stations where the PML-N won, a majority of PML-N votes were cast by women. In KP, most male voters cast their ballots for PTI and MMA, whereas the votes of 23 percent of women, who voted differently here, went to the PPP and PML-N.
But whatever that has been made available by FAFEN shows that political parties might now want to gain traction from independent-minded women voters whose percentage saw an increase last year and may continue to do so.
In the Punjab, more men voted for PTI at stations where the party received the most votes, whereas at stations where it did not, most women voted for PML-N or the PPP. Sindh in this respect provides an even more interesting picture. The province, beyond its capital Karachi, has been an electoral bastion of the PPP since 1970. Analysing the FAFEN findings, Afiya S. Zia (in The News International) concludes that, without women voters, the PPP would struggle to hold its electoral dominance in Sindh.
Here’s why: According to FAFEN, the reason why the PPP managed to actually increase its electoral influence in Sindh in 2018, was due to the manner in which an overwhelming number of Sindhi women turned out to vote for the party. So, in Sindh, whereas many male voters switched to anti-PPP candidates, in certain areas of north and central Sindh this departure was overwhelmingly compensated by women who voted heavily for the PPP.
Balochistan saw the least percentage of women voting differently than their male counterparts. But those who did, either voted for PTI or the Awami National Party, instead of the Balochistan Awami Party, the party that won the most seats in the province. In many stations of KP and Punjab, where the current ruling party PTI could not win a majority, this was mostly due to women voters who decided to vote for a different party.
Such a study is still in its infancy in Pakistan. But whatever that has been made available by FAFEN shows that political parties might now want to gain traction from independent-minded women voters, whose percentage saw an increase last year and which may continue to do so. It would be fascinating to study why 18 percent of all women voters decided to vote differently from men and whether this trend would continue, and may even trigger future electoral upsets.
Published in Dawn, EOS, August 18th, 2019