XVII Congress of the Brazilian Studies Association

Who Distrusts Elections? Evidence from Brazil

• In Event: Electoral Politics and Struggles for Representation in Contemporary Brazil

Abstract

Who distrusts elections? The social media boom led scholars to consider it part of the public sphere. Others argue that people only engage in political discourse online when discussing with their ideologically similar others. Yet, spreading misinformation on social media has been perceived as a threat to public interests. Contested results also trigger election distrust, especially among supporters of losers. This paper applies probit maximum likelihood estimators and predictive margins to the 2022 wave of the Brazilian Electoral Study to examine who distrusts elections in Brazil. The case is relevant because from 2019 through 2022 Jair Bolsonaro incentivized his supporters to disbelieve the electoral process. He used social media to spread misinformation and contested the 2018 electoral process, even though he won it, and unsuccessfully supported changing electronic machine votes for printed ballots, alleging fraud. However, scholars have shown no irregularities in that electoral cycle. Online misinformation leads to inaccurate beliefs about election fairness and inflames polarization. Such a trend is valid for the Brazilian case, especially regarding Bolsonaro’s campaign WhatsApp usage in the 2018 elections. Considering the context, we hypothesize that Bolsonaro’s supporters who inform themselves at a high frequency on social media are more likely to distrust elections. We also test whether the difference in distrust levels between the pre- and post-Bolsonaro administrations is significant. Results show no significant difference regarding electoral distrust between Bolsonaro’s and other candidates’ followers. However, the share of respondents who do not trust elections is statistically significantly higher than in previous waves.

Authors

• Gustavo Venturelli, Universidade de São Paulo

• Filipe Faeti, Universidade Federal de São Carlos