Abstract
Several recently published studies analyze the effects of national conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs, such as the Brazilian Bolsa Familia and the Mexican Oportunidades, on presidential elections. Most of them show that these programs boost incumbents' electoral support among the poor. This research note is the first scholarly attempt to investigate this phenomenon at a lower-level unit of a federal state, by assessing the impact of a municipal cash transfer program on a mayoral election. Specifically, it investigates whether Renda Minima, the cash transfer program of the city of Sao Paulo, affected beneficiaries' electoral behavior in favor of the incumbent candidate in the 2004 mayoral election. This note analyzes survey data from CEBRAP/IBOPE and shows that cash transfers did, indeed, affect beneficiaries' behavior in the predicted direction, but only in cases where they did not benefit from any other CCT program, such as the federal Bolsa Familia or the Sao Paulo state Renda Cidada. These results suggest that the pro-incumbent effect of CCT programs may be diluted by similar programs launched by governments at other tiers of a federation, even if they are led by the same party.
Highlights
Several recently published studies analyze the effects of national conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs, such as the Brazilian Bolsa Família and the Mexican Oportunidades, on presidential elections
Do municipal programs affect mayoral elections in the same way federal programs affect presidential elections? Do municipal programs affect the behavior of individuals who already benefit from state and federal cash transfers in the same way they may affect the behavior of other individuals? Brazil is probably the best laboratory for studying these and other related research questions, as it has many conditional and unconditional cash transfer programs managed at different levels of the federation and by administrations led by different parties
My results show that Renda Mínima had a strong and substantial effect on voting decisions, but with an interesting caveat: the program significantly enhanced support for the incumbent mayoral candidate only among those who did not benefit from any other cash transfer program, such as the federal Bolsa Escola and Bolsa Família, and the state Renda Cidadã
Summary
Several recently published studies analyze the effects of national conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs, such as the Brazilian Bolsa Família and the Mexican Oportunidades, on presidential elections. During the campaigns preceding the 2004 mayoral election, incumbent candidate Marta Suplicy largely advertised the launching and expansion of Renda Mínima as one of the most important achievements of her administration She sought to associate her image with Lula's, the charismatic co-partisan president who had implemented Bolsa Família in the previous year. The main goal of this research note is to assess whether, despite the incumbent's defeat, investments in the municipal cash transfer program paid off electorally; that is, if recipients voted for the incumbent at higher rates than non-recipient voters If this is the case, Sao. Paulo's 2004 mayoral election would attest that the widely reported pro-incumbent effect of cash transfer programs on presidential elections applies to electoral contests at lower levels of a federation. All of the models estimated below include binary variables indicating these characteristics as controls
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