Relevant Factors for the Voting Decision in the 2002 Presidential Election: An Analysis of the ESEB (Brazilian Electoral Study) Data

Ano: 2007 | Volume: 1 | Número: 1

Autores: Yan de Souza Carreirão

Palavras-chave: brazilian politics, presidential elections, electoral behaviour

Resumo Inglês:

The article investigates some of the most relevant factors for the voting decision
in the 2002 presidential election by testing some of the main hypotheses
about electoral behaviour in the country by means of logistic regression analyses
based on data from the ESEB (Brazilian Electoral Study), a post-electoral survey
conducted on a national sample of voters. In the models, taken as a whole, political
opinions did not have much weight in the voting decision. Furthermore, they
are unable to “explain” a very large share of voters’ positioning on a left-right scale
or on a scale of voters’ “party sentiments”. All these “political” variables taken as
a whole, in turn, “explain” only part of the evaluations that voters make of the
government’s performance. The analysis shows that Brazilian voters’ voting decision
seems rather varied, since some variables were shown to be relevant to “explain”
the vote for a candidate, but not for the others. The variables shown to be
more frequent (for all four candidates analysed) and with more considerable weight
were: voters’ religion, their “party sentiments”, their positioning on a left-right
scale, the evaluations made of the then current government (in actual fact important
only for the vote for Serra, the government’s candidate) and the candidates’
attributes (especially “reliability” and “preparedness/competence”).