Who abstains in Brazil? Local competition and Covid-19 effect on turnout in the 2020 municipal election

Abstract

In the present research we examines the electoral abstention. The paper is about the voter participation in political disputes. The objective is to analyze the effects of political variables associated with the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on electoral abstention in the 2020 local elections in Brazil. The disputes of all 5,568 municipalities are considered to answer the question: who and where else abstained in the 2020 elections? The aggregate results show that municipalities with more deaths from Covid-19 tended to have higher abstention. However, the number of candidates, used as an indicator of electoral competition, exerted a strong opposite effect – in favor of turnout. At the individual level, the data indicate that men, low schooling and age over 40 years tended to participate less in the 2020 elections.