Decisões impopulares e desempenho eleitoral de deputados federais no Brasil

Abstract

The democratic political arena invariably dispenses with clean, free and fair elections, where candidates can dispute the status of representatives. Specifically in the 2018 General Elections for the Federal Chamber, a peculiar picture of low level of electoral performance drew attention, since 1994 there was no such loss for candidates to reelection to the Chamber of Deputies. In addition to the simplistic explanation, the period of the 55th legislature was marked by economic, social, political crises and an impeachment process. The immediate replacement, Michel Temer, immediately sought to contain public spending and resume the economy through various reforms, a new tax regime and new labor legislation, however, its approval depended on congressional scrutiny. While the reforms were gaining notoriety, it also received the accusation of unpopular people, raising the fear of electoral commitment among deputies. Therefore, considering the recent appearance of the speech, an option was made to analyze whether deputies who vote for unpopular measures compromise their performance in the elections for the Chamber of Deputies. The work started from an opposite hypothesis to parliamentary common sense, deputies who vote on unpopular measures do not compromise their electoral performance. The literature on supports the hypothesis and points out other causes as determinants of electoral performance, however, when analyzing the multivariate model of logistic regression, the results showed that there is a negative effect in voting on unpopular measures and electoral performance, which can affect up to 14 % the performance of candidates for the Chamber of Deputies. Even so, if caution is necessary, one cannot be deterministic as to the results, voting in an unpopular measure is a new and little explored variable, and at most, may appear with a research agenda for jobs and not as a cause of the performance of candidates for the Chamber of Deputies.