Anti-deforestation import rules scraped a win, 13 votes to 10, a 14-point margin that flatters a genuinely split electorate. This was not a rout but a photo-finish dressed up as a majority, and the topline hides a sharper story underneath.
The real divide was generational rather than ideological in any obvious sense. Voters under 35 — who made up 18 of the 23 with profiles, the overwhelming bulk of the chamber — were essentially tied, 8 yes to 10 no across the 16-24 and 25-34 brackets. It was the tiny bloc of 35-54s, just five voters, who went unanimously yes and pushed the result over the line.
Gender, unusually, offered no story at all: men and women split identically, 6-5, mirroring each other vote for vote — a rare symmetry in a dataset otherwise defined by the age fracture. That pattern echoes a familiar shape in green regulation fights, where younger cohorts often prove the most sceptical of new compliance burdens on business rather than the most instinctively pro-environment, complicating any simple story about who "owns" net zero-adjacent politics.
A yes with the numbers of a maybe: won on the strength of a handful of older voters, not the conviction of the many who actually turned out.
0 Opinions
Weigh in on the debate.