Localism in Brazil’s Proportional Elections: Contextual Effect of “Friends and Neighbors”

Abstract

While early studies on electoral strategies argue that Brazilian system encourages “personal vote” and the creation of geographically located electoral strongholds, latest studies show that the most effective electoral strategy is vote dispersion. According to the contextual perspective, people vote for candidates whose political messages they have access to and who correspond to the demands of the places where they live. Based on the construction of a database regarding the legislative elections from 2010 to 2018 we seek to interpret the results found using this perspective. Starting from the hypothesis of a vote ruled by the way information is diffused in space, we find that most candidates have their strongest vote in their municipality’s electoral domicile, that those with only municipal experience show a voting pattern consistent with the “friends and neighbors” effect, and that there is a party coordination in the formation of candidate lists.Keywords: localism; electoral concentration; electoral strategies; electoral behaviour; electoral geography.

localism; electoral concentration; electoral strategies; electoral behavior; electoral geography