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The 1989 Presidential Election: Electoral Behaviour in a Brazilian City

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Maria D'Alva Gil Kinzo
Maria D'Alva Gil Kinzo
Affiliation:
Professor of Political Science, Universidade de São Paulo.
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Extract

The two and a half years of the Collor de Mello government were marked by so many dramatic events that the significance of the election which made him the first directly elected President in 29 years was not accorded the attention it derserved. A succession of events made the 1989 election results lose much of their interest for debate and study: the drastic after the inauguration of his government; the marketing campaign every time Collor appeared in the media; and, above all, the serious accusations of corruption involving his wife, relatives, close friends and Collor himself leading to his impeachment in December 1992.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , May 1993 , pp. 313 - 330
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1 The 1976 study, by Lamounier, Bolivar, was based on a survey conducted during the municipal elections of that year: see ‘Presidente Prudente: O Crescimento da Oposição num Reduto Arenista’, in Wanderley, Fabio (ed.), Os Partidos e o Regime – A Logica do Processo Eleitoral Brasileiro (São Paulo, 1978) pp. 1–89Google Scholar. Another survey was conducted by myself during the 1989 elections and it entailed interviews with 600 people, of 16 years old or above, resident in the municipality and selected by means of procedures similar to those used in the 1976 survey: an equiprobabilistic sample in the choice of the census sectors, the household and the person to be interviewed in the selected household. The work of sampling involved the collaboration of Milton Bussab.

2 In the light of the extension of the franchise to illiterates and by a reduction in the voting age to sixteen.

3 On this see Lamounier, B., Os Partidos e as Eleições no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, 1975)Google Scholar and Kinzo, M. D. G., Legal Opposition Politics under Authoritarian Rule in Brazil – The Case of the MDB, 1966–79 (London, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 B. Lamounier, ‘Presidente Prudente: O Crescimento da Oposição num Reduto Arenista’, in Fabio Wanderley (ed.), Os Partidos e o Regime.

5 ibid., p. 4.

6 Source: statistics for 1970, B. Lamounier, ‘Presidente Prudente:…’, and for 1980, Censo Demográfico de 1980, IBGE. Unfortunately there are no data for 1990, since the national census for this decade is not yet available.

7 B. Lamounier, ‘Presidente Prudente:…’, p. 88, my emphasis.

8 Before commenting upon the information in this table, a methodological clarification must be made regarding the way we used the research data. Half the interviews were held before the first round, and half in the period prior to the second round. This means that the first group of interviewees did not know who would be the two finalists; hence, when asked their preference in the second round they indicated one amongst all the contenders and not just Lula and Collor. In this way the analysis of voting intentions in the second round is based on a smaller number of cases since we left aside those who chose candidates that did not compete in the second round. However, with the aim of increasing the number of cases, we also included those who declared support for Lula or Collor in the first round on the supposition that an elector who supported one or other would reaffirm that choice in the second round.

9 These figures should not be interpreted, however, as a clear indication of a strong association between party preference and voter intention in the case of these parties. It can be the case that a person expressed preference for a party precisely because it is the party of the candidate he is supporting rather than the other way around.

10 Another feature worthy of mention in the São Paulo election was the exceptionally poor showing of the candidate Leonel Brizola. Placed third in the first round (15.5 % of the votes) at national level, Brizola obtained merely 1.5% in São Paulo (and 1.1% in Presidente Prudente).

11 See Singer, A., ‘Collor na Periferia: A Volta por Cima do Populismo?’, in Lamounier, B. (ed.), De Geisela Collor: O Balanço da Transição (São Paulo, 1990), pp. 135–52Google Scholar.

12 At this point a comment upon spoilt and blank votes is in order. According to the data presented in Table 3, in the cases of both educational level and family income, the percentage of interviewees who declared an intention to cast blank or spoilt votes was much higher than the average, precisely amongst the best educated and those with the highest incomes. This is indicative of the fact that those electors who abstained, cast blank or spoilt votes, did so not so much out of a lack of interest or boredom with the election, but because they rejected the option offered in the second round.