IZMIR, Turkey — Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which faces one of the toughest electoral challenges of its 20-year rule in the May 14 election, is losing its electoral advantage among conservative women, which had been one of its pillars, political analysts say. 

Rasim Sisman, the chairman of the Social Democracy Foundation, told Al-Monitor that a survey of 1,067 women found that only 68.7% who voted for the ruling party in the 2018 elections are likely to vote for the party again. The report was prepared in collaboration with the German Friedrich Ebert Foundation and Panaliz Polling and Research Company

According to the poll, 7.8% of that number will go to the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which is actively wooing conservative women, and 2% to the nationalist Good Party, which is one of the two political parties with a woman chair or a co-chair. CHP and the Good Party have come together with four smaller right-wing parties for an electoral alliance that rallies around Kemal Kilicdaroglu as their presidential candidate, while incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has sought to broaden his electoral base with its traditional ally, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), and two small Islamist parties. The SODEV poll says 14% remain undecided on how they will vote in the parliamentary elections, which will take place at the same time as the first round of the presidential polls on May 14.

Sisman and Ali Suslu, the director of ALF polling and research company, believe that the female votes up for grabs will mainly go to larger parties such as the CHP and the Good Party. A survey carried out by ALF in January shows that the AKP — traditionally the top party among women voters — has become second  (26.5%) to CHP (29.2%), even before AKP’s contested alliance with two Islamist parties with misogynist agendas last month.