Context and vote: the impact of the right-wing political forces reorganization on the ideological consistency of the vote in the 2018 elections

Abstract

This article aims to assess the effect of ideology on Bolsonaro’s vote in the 2018 presidential elections. Our argument is that, after a long period of discreet action on Brazilians’ political behavior, ideology is again relevant. To explain this change, we adopted a contextualist perspective, according to which the reorganization of the right in the parliament, in the streets and in the media and the offer of an extreme right candidacy in the electoral competition created favorable conditions for the alignment, in the electorate, between ideology and electoral choice in 2018. The analysis reveal that Brazilians are more ideologically oriented and the tests confirm the impact of ideology on presidential choice