Suchergebnisse

The role of public opinion polls in electoral democracy is undeniable because, for good or for bad, they affect, in part, the kinds of laws and policies elected officials enact. But the voices measured in polls are not perfectly representative of their populations of interest. More precisely, polls generally sing with a more 'knowledgeable' accent than those they represent because of the greater tendency of the less knowledgeable to remain silent. This distortion, however, can be palliated by providing conditions more propitious to attitude development. By relying on survey-experiments conducted in Brazil and in the U.S., I present evidence that inducing people to think more carefully before answering attitude questions reduces substantially the likelihood of the less knowledgeable, which compose most of the Brazilian and American populations, to express a nonopinion response. Thus providing people with greater opportunity to think about politics -- something most of them do not do very frequently -- makes for more representative measures of public opinion. But the analyses also suggest that increased thought induces greater uncertainty or ambivalence among the most knowledgeable. As a whole, this paper improves our understanding on how people come to develop political attitudes and on the conditions that lead to greater attitude uncertainty or ambivalence. It also carries important lessons and implications for survey design more generally. Adapted from the source document.

Few public policies have been as consequential or divisive as affirmative action. Proponents have argued for the need for equity and the redress of past and present discrimination, whereas opponents enlist claims over individual liberty and merit. Scholars have examined support to affirmative action, asking to what extent citizens' support is shaped by their political ideology, interest, prejudice, or some combination thereof. Much work to date has focused on the United States, where disentangling theoretical explanations has proved challenging. We turn our attention to an understudied but important case: Brazil. Brazil has implemented a broad form of affirmative action for admission to federal universities that include consideration of the applicant's education, income, and race. Adopting both a conventional question and a list experiment embedded in a face‐to‐face survey among a nationally representative sample of adult Brazilians, we find that public support for affirmative action suffers from social desirability bias, and in our subsequent regression analysis, that attitudes about affirmative action are structured especially by individuals' interests.

Abstract
In many developing democracies, polling often comes with elevated levels of bias and variance. We argue that electoral malpractice can be one reason why. We build a theory and test it with data from elections between 2002 and 2014 in Brazil. We find that polling errors are larger in: (a) elections with many undecided voters and large imbalances in financial resources among campaigns; (b) the poorer Northeast region of Brazil, which is more closely associated with patronage and vote buying; and (c) low-profile, low-information elections. Our analysis serves as a cautionary tale for interpreting polling in democracies like Brazil, even if/when other sources of error in the polling industry are mitigated.

AbstractWe study the impact of compulsory voting in Brazil, where voting is mandatory from age 18 to 70 and voluntary for those aged 16, 17 and 70+. Using a survey sample of 8008 respondents, we document voter confusion about how the age criterion applies. Some people falsely believe that what matters is one's age in an election year rather than on Election Day. Next, we perform a regression discontinuity (RD) analysis of compulsory voting among young voters with register-based data from six Brazilian elections (2008–2018). We find that the effect of compulsory voting is seriously underestimated if we focus solely on the discontinuities prescribed by the law. Our findings carry important implications for studies adopting the RD design where knowledge of the cutoff is expected of the units of interest (like those about compulsory voting) and confirm that compulsory voting is a strong institutional arrangement that promotes greater electoral participation.

The interplay between explicit and implicit attitudes toward affirmative action (AA) policies is relevant to applied psychology. Its comprehension helps to improve our capacity to evaluate support for such policies. The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which students' race, political opinion of affirmative action, and prejudice against minorities influence the relationship between implicit-explicit attitudes toward affirmative action policies. 492 student participants were recruited from a large Brazilian public university about racial quotas in admissions. Implicit and explicit measures of attitude about the admission process were applied, together with measures of political opinion of affirmative action, prejudice against minorities and race. The results show that race has little effect on the difference between implicit and explicit attitudes about the admission process, but that prejudice and political position exert strong effects. Our findings suggest that implicit measures of attitudes should be used when evaluating attitudes on AA. ; La interacción entre las actitudes explícitas e implícitas hacia las políticas de acción afirmativa (AA) es relevante para la psicología aplicada. Su comprensión ayuda a mejorar nuestra capacidad para evaluar el apoyo a tales políticas. El propósito de este estudio fue determinar en qué medida la raza de los estudiantes, la opinión política de la acción afirmativa y el prejuicio contra las minorías influyen en la relación entre las actitudes implícitas y explícitas hacia las políticas de acción afirmativa. 492 estudiantes participantes de una gran universidad pública brasileña fueron encuestados acerca las cuotas raciales en las admisiones. Se aplicaron medidas de actitud implícita y explícita sobre el proceso de admisión, junto con medidas de opinión política de acción afirmativa, prejuicios contra las minorías y la raza. Los resultados muestran que la raza tiene poco efecto en la diferencia entre las actitudes implícitas y explícitas sobre el proceso de admisión, pero que los prejuicios y la posición política ejercen fuertes efectos. Nuestros hallazgos sugieren que se deben usar medidas implícitas de actitudes al evaluar actitudes sobre AA.

Research on presidential coattails in elections has focused nearly exclusively on two-party systems like the United States. Much less is known, however, about presidential coattails in multiparty systems where electoral and governing coalitions are common currency. Under coalitional presidentialism, we argue that presidential coattails are diffused, benefiting the president's party but also her coalition party members, especially those most strongly associated with the coalition itself. Using electoral data from Chile and Brazil, two widely studied but distinct cases of coalitional presidentialism, we find strong evidence supporting this claim. The results carry important implications for students of coalitional presidentialism, presidential coattails, and party systems, more generally.

RESUMO Neste artigo são testadas diferentes hipóteses derivadas da literatura especializada nacional e internacional sobre o efeito da estratificação e mobilidade social nas atitudes políticas e seus atributos no Brasil. São usados dados do Barômetro das Américas, rodada de 2012, pesquisa de opinião pública domiciliar com amostra representativa da população brasileira. Ao articular a literatura sobre classes sociais com a de psicologia política, o artigo interlaça duas vertentes teóricas que raramente dialogam para melhor especificar a potencial diferenciação comportamental por classes sociais e por padrões de mobilidade social. Assim, enfocamos variações tanto no conteúdo substantivo das opiniões de distintas classes, como também exploramos as distinções nos atributos das atitudes como não opinião, extremismo e heterogeneidade. Os achados demonstram um certo exagero da literatura brasileira atual em diferenciar a nova classe média das demais.

Este artigo aborda o papel das ideologias esquerda edireita sobre o comportamento político do eleitorado brasileiro, com foco na constrição que essas ideologias devem gerar sobre suas preferências políticas. Em outras palavras, avalia se o eleitor estrutura suas atitudes políticas em consonância com a ideologia de que diz ser adepto. Usando dados de survey do Estudo Eleitoral Brasileiro (Eseb), os achados indicam que parte significativa do eleitorado do Brasil nem se autoposiciona ideologicamente. Pior ainda, a ideologia declarada por poucos eleitores não constringe suas preferências políticas. Seguramente, a grande maioria dos eleitores não conhece a complexidade envolta no antagonismo programático de cada lado do espectro ideológico. Conclui-se, portanto, que as ideologias não são importantes para o comportamento político do eleitorado brasileiro.

Some institutional arrangements may be undesirable for democracy by obscuring which political actors are to be held responsible for failed or successful policies and bad or good macroeconomic performances. Much of the work in the area has focused on whether institutions affect the 'clarity of political responsibility' and the ability of voters to punish or reward, in turn, governments and elected officials. Not much has been said, however, about the assignment of responsibility outside the electoral context, for a broad range of policy areas. This paper explores these questions in the context of French semi-presidentialism. It demonstrates that the French public is surprisingly quite responsive to the demands imposed by their political system by adjusting reasonably well their evaluations of both actors of the executive in light of major political events and changes in the economic conditions when the circumstances clearly indicate which of the two is 'in charge'. At other times, however, this particular institutional arrangement obscures instead political responsibility.

Resumo: Não é novidade que o cidadão brasileiro, como outros vivendo em países democráticos, em média sabem pouco sobre seus governos e sobre as orientações ideológicas da maioria dos candidatos e partidos políticos. No entanto, poucos pesquisadores estudaram de maneira sistemática as conseqüências da falta de informação política para a vida democrática. Segundo alguns, a falta de informação afeta de maneira importante as atitudes políticas dos eleitores. Já para outros, a informação política não é relevante para formação de opiniões. O artigo examina essa questão no Brasil, usando pela primeira vez dados de um experimento conduzido em uma pesquisa de opinião pública realizada em 2004. Mais especificamente, examinamos como a informação sobre o governo federal brasileiro afeta as preferências políticas do cidadão em termos de gastos públicos. No experimento utilizado, alguns participantes receberam informação sobre as fontes de renda do governo federal, suas despesas e políticas públicas, enquanto outros entrevistados não receberam qualquer informação adicional. Os resultados indicam que os participantes que receberam informação política preferem menos impostos e redução nos gastos públicos daqueles que não receberam informação política. Estes resultados têm conseqüências importantes para o estudo do processo democrático, pois indicam que uma cidadania mais informada tem atitudes e preferências políticas distintas de uma menos informada.