A Study of Federal Deputies from the Voters’ Perspective
We know very little about how Brazilian voters’ choose their candidates for Federal Deputy, what they expect from their representatives in the Chamber of Deputies and what they actually know about both candidates and representatives. There aren’t many survey studies designed specifically to focus on the local level and that include several items on legislative elections. With this in mind, we (Barry Ames, Andrew Baker and Lucio Renno) designed and collected a four-wave public opinion panel dataset in two mid-size Brazilian cities during the 2002 elections. One of the many goals of the project is to investigate vote choice for Federal Deputy. By focusing on the city level, the study attenuates the enormous national fragmentation in number of candidates and each candidate’s number of supporters is large enough to allow analysis of vote choice. Several questionnaire items, in several of the waves (some repeated in all four waves) focused exclusively in the elections for the Chamber of Deputies.
In wave one, which occurred in March and April, about 6 months before the election in October, respondents were asked if they knew the names of candidates competing in the current election, if the respondent remembered in whom they voted for in the 1998 elections, if that candidate was elected: If yes, the respondent was further asked if he/she was satisfied with the performance of their representative. The questionnaire also had an item on voters’ expectations regarding Federal Deputies. Respondents were asked to choose, among five categories what the most important task of a Federal Deputy is.
Following waves repeated some of these questions and introduced new ones. In wave two, vote intention for Federal Deputy was added. In wave three, after the election, respondents were also asked if they knew the political party of the candidate they voted for, if they knew if the candidate was attempting reelection or not and if they knew if their candidate was elected. Finally, in wave four, two years after the election, the focus was on voters levels of information and satisfaction with their representatives’ performance in office.
In the following weeks, I will discuss the tabulations for all of these different variables.