Dataset of Municipal Supplementary Elections in Brazil (2004-2018)
Description
This dataset compiles the results of 433 Brazilian supplementary elections pertaining to the municipal elections of 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016, all of which had occurred in 411 municipalities. The main hypothesis is that the judicialization of municipal electoral competition has become an additional strategy used by political actors because of its effectiveness. The innovation of the dataset is to present the political alignment of the political actors involved in the supplementary elections, besides highlighting the legal reasons for the substitution of mayors. The data collected indicate that the use of actions aimed at the deposition of mayors has become an additional strategy in electoral competition. After all, approximately 58% of the actions were moved solely by opposition parties. When the cases in which the opposition acted jointly with the Public Prosecutor's office are added to the figures, the figure reaches a staggering 80% of the cases. There is also a balance sheet, with opposition political groups and allies of the previous mayor each winning approximately 50% of the supplementary elections analyzed. However, this is only an apparent balance, because on average, defeated political groups that judicialize the electoral process and succeed in invalidating the regular elections, obtain the power in half of the supplementary elections that they contend for. That is, the holding of new elections allowed them to reverse adverse results. The numbers are even more significant when opposition groups act alone in deposition actions. In these cases, approximately 63% of the supplementary elections that they dispute are due.
Files
Steps to reproduce
The dataset was constructed from four different sources. The first is the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) data repository, which contains information about the results of the elections in Brazil, especially those elected in regular and supplementary elections, their respective votes and the total number of voters able to vote in those elections. The second data source, also managed by the TSE, is the system for the dissemination of candidacies and accountability (DivulgaCandContas), from which data can be obtained on the party coalitions that competed in the regular and supplementary elections. Finally, data on the population estimated for the municipalities studied were obtained from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). The information on the reasons that determined the new elections in each municipality, as well as the respective legal grounds, were obtained in the systems of the Regional Electoral Courts of the States (TRE’s). The composition of his party coalition was used as a criterion to position a candidate as being opposed to the previous government. If the former mayor's party was part of the coalition of the next mayor, he was treated as an ally candidate. Otherwise, it was considered as opposing. This same criterion was adopted in the alignment of the authorship of the deposition actions. If they were tried by a party or coalition of which the defendant was not part, they remained classified as opposing. Kinzo's criterion (2004, 2007) was used to establish the ideological position of the parties (left, center and right). When the party was only the result of a name change or the split of another party, the ideological alignment of the original party was considered. When the party was effectively a new political actor, its most common alliances and possible positions on substantive issues were considered (KINZO, 2007, p, 153).