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Bolsa Família and the Shift in Lula's Electoral Base, 2002–2006: A Reply to Bohn

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2022

Cesar Zucco  and
Timothy J. Power
Cesar Zucco
Affiliation:
Rutgers University and Fundação Getúlio Vargas-EBAPE
Timothy J. Power
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Abstract

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In a recent article published in the Latin American Research Review, Simone Bohn analyzed electoral results and survey data from Brazil to contest several theses concerning the reelection of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2006. In particular, Bohn asserted that beneficiaries of Bolsa Família, a conditional cash transfer program that was reaching eleven million families at the time of the 2006 election, were already supporters of Lula in 2002, and therefore the program could not have contributed to the change in Lula's constituency between his election in 2002 and his reelection in 2006. We show that these claims are based on voter recall data collected between nine and fifty-seven months after the elections, and that these data grossly overestimate actual electoral support for Lula—probably as a result of well-known reporting biases. Reanalysis of Bohn's data as well as analysis of more reliable surveys suggest that there were indeed significant changes in voting patterns between 2002 and 2006, and that Bolsa Família did play an important role in the 2006 elections.

Resumo

Resumo

Em um artigo recentemente publicado na LARR, Simone Bohn analisou resultados eleitorais e pesquisas de opinião brasileiras para questionar diversas teses sobre a reeleição do Presidente Lula, em 2006. Em particular, Bohn afirma que beneficiários do Bolsa Família, um programa de transferência de renda que alcançava 11 milhões de famílias no ano da eleição, já tinham sido eleitores de Lula em 2002, e que portanto, o programa não pode ter contribuído para a mudança na composição do eleitorado de Lula entre sua primeira eleição em 2002 e reeleição em 2006. Neste artigo, mostramos que tais afirmações se baseiam e declarações de voto feitas entre 9 e 57 meses depois das eleições, e que os resultados destas pesquisas de opinião dramaticamente superestimam o apoio eleitoral de Lula. A re-análise do dados de Bohn, bem como a análise de pesquisas mais confiáveis sugerem que houve mudanças significativas nos padrões de votação para Lula entre 2002 e 2006, e que o Bolsa Família teve sim impacto nas eleições de 2006.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , 2013 , pp. 3 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 by the Latin American Studies Association

Footnotes

We thank Wendy Hunter, David Doyle, David Samuels, and the anonymous LARR reviewers for comments, the Latin American Public Opinion Project (Vanderbilt University) for conducting and making available its surveys, and the Center for the Study of Public Opinion at the University of Campinas (CESOP-UNICAMP) for cataloging and making available a wealth of public opinion data. Replication materials and a web appendix to this article with extended results are available at http://hdl.handle.net/1902.1/18350. The usual disclaimer applies.

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