Deindustrialization and the Dynamics of Presidential Elections in Brazil (2002-2018)

Abstract

The goal of this article is to assess whether, and to what extent, the deindustrialization of the Brazilian economy has affected the geography of voting in the last two decades. Particular interest is given to examining the inflection of the vote in the Workers’ Party (PT). The study considers deindustrialization as an exogenous economic shock that, by changing the income and nature of employment available in localities, alters electoral support for the nationally incumbent party. Our main sources of empirical data are: the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE) and the Superior Electoral Court (TSE); and our spatial units of analysis are municipalities. Our results confirm the hypothesis that deindustrialization negatively affected the Workers’ Party vote. We also emphasize the regional characteristics of this process, which is fundamental, above all, to the understanding of the 2018 electoral result. The article is original because it fills a gap in electoral studies by treating structural changes in Brazilian capitalism as a primordial explanatory vector.

deindustrialization; Brazilian economy; Workers’ Party; voting geography