Not even so “Flamengo”: Issues on positioning and vote in Brazil

Abstract

Introduction:

This article aims to analyze the supposed simplicity of perceptions and images that voters use to base their understandings and behaviors on institutional politics, treated by Fábio Wanderley Reis as the “Flamengo Syndrome”.

Materials and Methods:

The research is based on econometric and psychometric analyzes of survey data collected in the Brazilian presidential elections – in Datafolha, ESEB and Lapop -, from 1989 to 2014. For this, the validity of the reasoning was verified by examining a possible association between political preferences and voting over the years.

Results:

As a result, the unfounded presence of the postulates that give the Brazilian voters a little complex orientation is verified. The relevance of programmatic rather than merely material and symbolic conceptions of citizen behavior proved to be statistically significant in all the years under study.

Discusssion:

The conviction of a group of voters suffering from a disease, the “Flamengo Syndrome”, laid the foundations of a literature that remained little attentive to the political convictions of the voters. In this article, I demonstrate that there is a clear correlation between political positions and vote, an aspect that contradicts the claim defended by Reis.

Keywords:
Flamengo Syndrome; political behavior; multidimensionality; political sophistication; vote