ABSTRACT
Conventional wisdom suggests that partisanship has little impact on voter behavior in Brazil; what matters most is pork-barreling, incumbent performance, and candidates’ charisma. Yet, since re-democratization, more than half of Brazilian voters have expressed either a strong affinity for or antipathy against a particular political party. The contours of positive and negative partisanship in Brazil have mainly been shaped by how people feel about the Workers’ Party (PT). Voter behavior in Brazil has largely been structured around sentiment for or against this one party and none of Brazil’s many other parties. We explain how the PT successfully cultivated widespread partisanship in a difficult environment. We also explain the emergence of anti-PT attitudes, and we reveal how positive and negative partisanship shapes voters’ attitudes about politics.
