Policy-based Abstention: An Application to Brazil’s 2002 Presidential Election

Gabriel Katz

doi:10.5539/res.v10n3p28

Abstract

This paper implements a unified model of individual abstention and vote choice, applying it to analyze policy-based alienation and indiﬀerence in Brazil’s historical 2002 presidential election. The results indicate that both alienation and indiﬀerence have a negative impact on turnout, with indiﬀerence contributing slightly more to voter abstention. Also, the determinants of alienation and indiﬀerence diﬀer considerably, the former being determined by structural factors such as voters’ information and perceived eﬃcacy levels, while the latter was related to short-term aspects such as parties’ mobilization eﬀorts. More importantly, the evidence shows that while alienation and indiﬀerence are strongly influenced by attitudinal and protest variables, they are also aﬀected by citizens’ evaluation of candidates’ ideological locations. The main conclusion is that abstention in Brazil’s 2002 election had a policy-driven component and that spatial considerations played a substantive role in citizens’ electoral behavior, a fact that has been largely overlooked in previous research on the determinants of abstention in Latin America.

Highlights

The effect of candidates' ideological locations on the probability of voting is one of the most appealing and important implications of the spatial voting literature pioneered by Downs (1957)
Different spatial voting models (Hinich & Ordeshook, 1969; Hinich, Ledyard, & Ordeshook, 1972; Enelow & Hinich, 1984) have distinguished between indifference-based abstention that occurs when candidates' platforms are too similar to justify the cost of voting, and alienation-based abstention that emerges when candidates' platforms are too distant from a voter to justify voting costs
This paper presents the first analysis of policy-based indifference and alienation abstention in Latin America, using data on Brazil‘s historical 2002 presidential election

Summary

Introduction

The effect of candidates' ideological locations on the probability of voting is one of the most appealing and important implications of the spatial voting literature pioneered by Downs (1957). This paper presents the first analysis of policy-based indifference and alienation abstention in Latin America, using data on Brazil‘s historical 2002 presidential election. Vol 10, No 3; 2018 on citizens' probabilities of voting in an emerging democracy whose party system and type of electoral competition differ markedly from those considered in earlier research This allows assessing whether the empirical regularities found in advanced democracies hold for other polities. It examines the impact of policy-based indifference and alienation in an electorate subject to compulsory voting, an institutional arrangement not previously examined. The model implemented here assumes that both candidates‘ locations and non-spatial issues affect alienation and indifference, and citizens consider their utility for each of the competing candidates when deciding whether or not to vote.

Modeling Alienation and Indifference-based Abstention

Data and Methodology

Empirical Results

7.38 Lowest

Concluding Remarks