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.