The Referendum of Weapons is discussed in this article with emphasis on the rhetorical structure of the television campaigns and in the electoral behavior. The goals are: a) examine how the organizations which represented the duality of thought - Parliamentary Front for a Brazil without weapons and Parliamentary Front for the Right to self-defense - elaborated their speeches for advertisement, broadcasted on Election Time, and b) assess how voters used such arguments in the vote definition. Therefore, the Election Time programs broadcasted from October 1st to the 20th, 2005 were analyzed. The methodology for the analysis of campaigns developed by researchers of Doxa/Iuperj (2000) was used for the study of rhetoric, after a minor adjustment. For the analysis of the behavior of the voter, a panel with in-depth interviews was applied.
A referendum in Brazil; The Brazilian weapon referendum; Rhetoric in referendums; The behavior of electors; Qualitative research
