Acessibilidade / Reportar erro

Patterns of political competition in municipalities, states, and regions of Brazil in elections for The Chamber of Deputies (2014 and 2018)

ABSTRACT

Introduction:

We analyzed voting patterns in municipalities in the 2014 and 2018 elections for Federal Deputy, comparing our findings against previous studies on the 1994 and 1998 elections. Our objective was to identify similarities or changes in voter behavior over this period.

Materials and methods:

The research is based on a quantitative and a comparative approach. From information available on the Superior Electoral Court's (TSE) archive, we built a database to carry out SQL and regression queries. We also used the “R” software to calculate the relevant comparable magnitudes.

Results:

Compared to twenty years ago, the differences between two consecutive elections have become more pronounced. In the 2014 and 2018 elections, the variation of the national average of effective candidates per municipality showed higher and unstable values. In 2018 we find a preponderance of municipalities with fragmented voting pattern. In the 100 largest Brazilian municipalities, there are hardly any examples of concentrated voting in the 2014 and 2018 elections. The Northeast continues to be the region with the most concentrated voting pattern, while the South has the most dispersed voting pattern.

Discussion:

Notably, the most populated municipalities revealed to be more electorally competitive. Although we cannot extrapolate our findings to infer future results, our work is relevant insofar as it provides more recent data on the voting profile in Brazilian municipalities, which may contribute both to understand changes in the political scenario as well as to subsidize decisions in several related areas, such as the Brazilian electoral system.

Keywords
legislative elections; municipal voting; federal deputies; vote concentration; vote dispersion

Universidade Federal do Paraná Rua General Carneiro, 460 - sala 904, 80060-150 Curitiba PR - Brasil, Tel./Fax: (55 41) 3360-5320 - Curitiba - PR - Brazil
E-mail: editoriarsp@gmail.com