Abstract
Previous studies have shown that the percentage of votes for Jair Messias Bolsonaro in the 2018 presidential elections, at the municipal and state levels, is related to the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of the number of deaths. We find the same effects at the intra- -municipal level in the city of São Paulo. Using geolocation, we associate voting data with number of deaths for the 96 districts in the city. We analyze excess mortality to mitigate underreporting issues and to account for exogenous determinants of mortality, as well as control for age structure and several indicators of socioeconomic vulnerability. The results are significant and indicate the existence of a relationship between votes for Bolsonaro and deaths during the pandemic — between one and five additional deaths per 100k people for each percentage point of votes. Several robustness checks support our findings.
Keywords
COVID19; Political persuasion; Political polarization; Ideology
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Note: Light grey lines are the municipal district limits and darker lines represent electoral zones.
Note: Coefficient estimates are from OLS regressions including indicators for vote decile, omitting the dummy for districts in the bin with the least percentage of votes for Bolsonaro (below the 10% quantile). The dependent variable is total excess deaths, calculated as the difference between the number of deaths in each district between April 2020 and March 2021, and the average of deaths in the previous three years. All regressions include controls for age structure, average income, and other socioeconomic variables. Standard errors are clustered at the subprefecture level and 95% confidence intervals are plotted. N = 96
Note: Coefficient estimates are from OLS regressions. The dependent variable is total excess deaths, calculated as the difference between the number of deaths in each district during each three-month period, and the average of deaths in the same three months of 2017-2019. All regressions include controls for age structure, average income, and other socioeconomic vari- ables. Standard errors are clustered at the subprefecture level and 95% confidence intervals are plotted. N = 96
Note: Acceleration of Deaths is defined as the percentage change between the average number of deaths from COVID-19 per day throughout 2020 and the average number of deaths from COVID-19 per day in the first three months of 2021. In the chart, R = 0.37 and p < 0.0002.
Note: Districts excluded in the robustness checks are shown with triangles in the last graph. Namely: Jabaquara, Jaguaré, Morumbi, Raposo Tavares, Rio Pequeno, São Domingos, Vila Andrade and Vila Sônia.