Abstract:
The article proposes to analyze the electoral success of candidates for mayor of Brazilian state capitals in 2020. The 2020 elections were held in the context of the covid-19 pandemic, in which mayors had to take measures to minimize the effects of the public health crisis. We sought to explain electoral success through four basic conditions: the approval of the mayor; the restrictiveness of social isolation measures; the political alignment of the mayor to the president; and the covid-19 death rate per 100 thousand inhabitants. To test the model, we used Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) to understand the different possible configurations that explain the electoral success in the capitals. We found that capital cities with whose mayors had high approval rates and with low death rates elected incumbent candidates, although other configurations also led to the electoral success of these candidates.
Keywords:
electoral success; covid-19; mayors; Brazilian state capitals; Qualitative Comparative Analysis