Updated and revised, with some discussion of voter decision-making models prompted by comments from Miguel and A.M. (The first two paragraphs are revised, and the last one is entirely new.)
Lula won 60.8% of the vote in Brazil’s presidential runoff on Sunday, against Geraldo Alckmin’s 39.2. That means that Alckim actually did worse in the two-candidate runoff than he had done in the multi-candidate first round.
In the first round, Alckmin had 41.6%. Put another way, Alckmin lost votes (2.4%) equivalent to about double Lula’s shortfall from a first-round victory (50%-48.6%=1.4%). Below, in the final paragraph and continuing in the exchanges with propagators in the comments, is some (wild) speculation about individual voter decision-making that might have produced this result. It is worth noting that the drop in Alckmin’s support was not a product of turnout differentials, at least not at the aggregate level. The tournout differential between rounds–it was a bit higher in the first round, as is usually the case–amounted to only about 0.17% of votes cast (using the first round as the denominator).
Offhand, I can’t think of a previous case in which one of two candidates in a runoff performed worse than in the first round. If someone has another case, please come forward!
Miguel asks in a comment below something I have been thinking about, too. Is it possible that some voters just wanted to punish Lula by making him wait, but still preferred that he have a second term? Yes, I think that is possible. If so, it would be a form of strategic voting that I am not aware of having been addressed in the literature. Some voters may have decided to withhold a vote from Lula in the first round and strengthen his main challenger, just to force them to debate again and to get a second look at the choices. Such a hypothetical voter would not, of course, be a committed PT or other left voter (there was a PT defector running to Lula’s left in the first round to attract those voters), but rather swing voters who perhaps did not feel too good about either of the viable candidates. In the second round, their “second look” did not convince them that Alckmin was better, after all. We are talking about very small percentages here of net swing away from Alckmin, but it is still the prospect of “second look” strategic voting is an interesting prospect.
As an aside, I just noticed that this orchard reached a milestone: This is its 1000th planting! We’re also closing in on our 50,000th visitor.
Lula Cruises to Big Victory
Political scientist and elections expert Matthew Shugart at Fruits and Votes has more analysis of how it went, noting that this is the first case he’s seen where the challenger did worse in the second round than in the first. He wonders if there are others.
Scion grafted by Publius Pundit - Blogging the democratic revolution — 30 October 2006 @ 18:11
I have to hypothes (beyond the one that things changed in the electorate between the first & second round) that and I’m wondering about your opinion. 1) Could it be that voters wanted to “punish” Lula in the first round, but then went back to him? or 2) Could the Brazilian negotiations w/ Bolivia (since Petrobras-Bolivia dispute was a consideration) have something to do w/ it?
Seed planted by Miguel Centellas — 30 October 2006 @ 18:23
Voter behavior isn’t that logical on an individual level. It only gets logical on a collective level, IMHO. When you have housewives who only occasionally read the news casting ballots, or youths focused on NASCAR or soccer, you are gonna get a certain amount of amorphous voting behavior, people floating all over the place. There was a big corruption scandal and maybe that swayed people temporarily. But I think Alckmin’s support was an inch deep, he couldn’t find a way to make it run deeper, and when Lula got in front of the cameras, and did a strong powerful campaign about who he was and what he was bringing, he won people over. Not only that, Lula’s the only president in recent memory who didn’t bring a crisis to Brazil. People often get more focused on the second round - after all, there are only two candidates to choose from - the namby pambys who only read a newspaper once a year might just have gotten focused about what their real interests were when it came right down to the wire and Lula reflected them. Just a guess. But I know that voter behavior is not perfectly logical on an individual level - otherwise, how could anyone explain some of our US congresspeople?
Seed planted by A.M. Mora y Leon — 31 October 2006 @ 09:59
Well, I disagree with the “collective logic” idea. We have to talk about individual voter decision-making, which of course is influenced by all sorts of group (organized and unorganized)–i.e. collective–stimuli.
But A.M. is indeed describing the sort of voter I have in mind in the new paragraph I appended to the original post just as A.M.’s comment came in. A voter who is conflicted, unsure whether Lula really deserves her vote, thinks there is a chance that Alckmin might be better, but remains uncertain. This kind of voter could very well be sufficiently uneasy as to vote for the candidate, of the two viable contenders, who for sure is not going to win the first round, in order to get that “second look.”
Lula’s the only president in recent memory who didn’t bring a crisis to Brazil.
Excellent point. However, that recognition would not explain why he apparently lost potential votes just as the first round loomed.
People often get more focused on the second round - after all, there are only two candidates to choose from - the namby pambys who only read a newspaper once a year might just have gotten focused about what their real interests were when it came right down to the wire and Lula reflected them.
Indeed. I think models of voter behavior–like Gelman and King (for my political scientist readers)–would be pretty consistent with such an explanation. And indeed, this is a model of individual voter logic, as is any theory of voter decision-making that suggests voters who may not pay much attention to politics regularly are trying to decide right up to the end which candidate is most aligned with “their real interests”! (I might note that they do not employ the concept of the “namby pamby,” however!)
Seed planted by MSS — 31 October 2006 @ 10:11
As I developed the “second look strategic voting” idea a bit further in the comment, I realize that I drifted away from the more purposive voting that I appeared to endorse in the last paragraph of the main post.
That is, it would be one thing for a voter to be uncertain and therefore defect late from the incumbent in the first round, but then acquire additional information and certainty prior to the runoff. It would be another thing to claim that the voter specifically wanted to send the election to a runoff. The latter would, of course, be the effect of the former.
Seed planted by MSS — 31 October 2006 @ 10:34
Brazil: Election Analysis
Scion grafted by Global Voices Online — 31 October 2006 @ 11:08
I don’t know about these theories of ‘making Lula wait.’ Alckmin was a cruddy candidate. He let Lula back him into a corner on the issue of privatization in the period between rounds. Lula accused Alckmin of wanting to privatize Petrobras, the Banco do Brasil, etc., and harped on the facts that despite all of the privatizations undertaken under the administration of Fernando Henrique Cardoso, an Alckmin ally, Brazil’s debt increased massively. “Where did all the money go?” became a question Alckmin was forced to address. He had no answer to the question, and was forced to explain again and again that he wouldn’t undertake further privatizations. Despite clear successes from several privatizations (Embraer is a global competitor, CVRD just bought Canada basically, the average Brazilian can get a phone for cheap, etc.), Brazilians just don’t like privatization. After this election, the word will never again be mentioned in Brazil. Bottom line: Alckmin ran a cruddy campaign and lost votes between rounds (I have read that this has happened only once before in all of Brazil’s history of 2-round elections, at any level - I think it was a mayoral election in Belo Horizonte) because of the emergence of a new issue that made him look bad.
Seed planted by David Samuels — 31 October 2006 @ 14:20
New information. Well, that makes sense. It’s more consistent with what I groped towards at comments no. 4 and 5 than with the original idea that implied a deliberate effort to require a second round.
On the other hand, is the C.W. that already has emerged on this race–that Lula lost potential voters on the eve of the first round–wrong? If it is right, then is it not possible that some voters just were not sure, and wanted to see what a one-on-one campaign would be like?
Thanks, David, for contributing!
Seed planted by MSS — 31 October 2006 @ 14:52
Perhaps the second round result reflects a form of bandwagoning? In presidential primaries, some candidates lose support week-to-week (whether in polls or ballot box results) and we don’t think much about it. Voters (and financial backers) have rallied behind prior “round” winners.
Also, in baseball Hall of Fame elections, voters frequently declare that they withhold votes for players merely to keep them from having too high a vote total in the first ballot. This is a form of punishment that could lead to the need for a subsequent ballot if the threshold is not met in the first test.
Seed planted by Rodger — 03 November 2006 @ 11:58