Analysis of the electoral programs of the presidential' candidates in 2014: PT and PSDB ideological positions

Abstract

Introduction: This article deals with the ideology of Brazilian political parties. The authors analyze the government programs of the Workers' Party (PT) and the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) in 2014 elections. The objective is to answer the following question: what is PT and PSDB's position on the Left-right scale in 2014 election? The hypothesis states that PT may be situated in the center-left and that PSDB may be situated in the center-right. Methods: The choice of object obeys two pragmatic criteria. The first criterion was the selection of parties that ran the Presidential elections of 2014 in the first round. Since 1994, PT and PSDB have become the two main protagonists of the Presidential elections. The second was to choose government programs of candidates for the Presidency of the Republic who obtained more than 5% of the votes in the national executive elections in 2014. This criterion is a condition of the methodology chosen, since we opted for the approach offered by the Comparative Manifesto Project (CMP), whose purpose is to codify and quantify the statements proposed by the parties in their government programs. It was necessary to codify these programs, followed by the application of the RILE index as a numerical indicator proposed by the mentioned methodology. Results: These two quantitative steps were, however, preceded by the qualitative analysis of the history of both parties, as well as of the documents in question, carried out throughout the codification process itself. Discussion: The result found at the end of both stages, however, partially contradicts this hypothesis. Thus, although the Workers' Party is indeed at the left of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party, both programs are embedded in the left-wing spectrum. Nevertheless, besides this general diagnosis it was possible to still infer some other slight differences noticed throughout the codification process.