ABSTRACT
Research on public opinion in Latin America increasingly incorporates measures of ideology into models of voting behavior. Self-reported left/right ideology and latent ideology derived from a series of issue scales have been extensively studied and validated as measures of political opinion in the United States. These measures have also been used in the study of voting behavior in Brazil, but whether they accurately capture a meaningful component of the decision-making process remains a largely open question. We examine ideological self-placement and a series of issue scales, first for Brazil and then in comparative context with other countries from the region as well as the US. We conclude by making recommendations for the future measurement and study of ideology in Brazil.
