Candidate resources rather than ethnic voting: explaining the underrepresentation of Afro-Brazilians

ABSTRACT

The parliamentary underrepresentation of disadvantaged ethnic groups is typically explained with a preference of the voters of the dominant ethnic group for co-ethnic candidates. This research note adds to the literature that calls into question the relevance of the voter preferences relative to resources of the candidates for the demographic underrepresentation of disadvantaged ethnic groups. It does so by providing important new evidence on a debate between scholars that argued for or against the importance of ethnic voting for the lower vote shares of the Afro-Brazilian relative to the white candidates in Brazil. We show that in the 2014 election in Brazil the direct effect of ethnicity on vote choice was limited and that other factors such as the candidates’ campaign expenditure, party affiliation, incumbency status and education were more important to explain the lower vote share of Afro-Brazilian relative to white candidates. We make use of a dataset including all candidates, which is merged with census and election data at the municipality level and apply fixed effects models.

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Acknowledgments

We are very grateful to Leandro De Magalhaes and Salomo Hirnoven for providing us with the data on incumbency. For helpful comments on previous versions of the article we would like to thank Leandro De Magalhaes, Malu Gatto, Aline Hirseland, Detlef Nolte, and Almut Schilling-Vacaflor, among others.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [grant number NO217/9-1,STR1379/1-1].

Notes on contributors

Oliver Strijbis

Oliver Strijbis is SNSF Professor at the Institute of Political Science of the University of Zurich and an associated researcher at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA). Mr. Strijbis is an editor of The Struggle over Borders: Cosmopolitanism and Communitarianism (Cambridge University Press) and has published in European Journal of Political Research, Electoral Studies, Sociological Methods and Research, International Journal of Forecasting, and Party Politics, among others.

Siri Völker

Siri Völker is a research fellow and doctoral student at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) and a doctoral student at the University of Hamburg. Her research focuses on social movements and political parties. In her dissertation, she analyses the interaction between the Brazilian black movement and left parties in Brazil.