An Analysis of the 2002 Presidential Elections Using Logistic Regression

Abstract

The 2002 elections were a watershed in Brazilian electoral history. Three aspects of the process in particular have been amply stressed in several analyses. The first is the symbolic dimension of Lula's personal victory, the biography of a man of the people who rises to the country's most important office. The second is the victory of PT, the main leftwing party in the country, winning federal office 22 years after being founded. The third is the dimension of the victory, with the president obtaining a resounding vote (61% of the valid votes), which surpassed that of any other Brazilian president since 1945. Despite this, the efforts made by political science to analyse the 2002 elections remain limited, in particular regarding the use of opinion poll results.T his research note does not intend to carry out a thorough and detailed analysis of the choice of candidates or of the key events in the campaign. The aim is to investigate the variables that may be associated with the voting decision in the 2002 presidential elections. To this end, the results of the election survey conducted by Instituto Universitário de Pesquisas (Iuperj)-2002 and the technique of logistic regression will be used. The latter is widely used for election studies in other countries, but little used in Brazil to date. Therefore, as well as providing a substantial analysis of the data, this research note suggests a methodological option for future studies on Brazilian elections.Few works have attempted to explain the determinants of the vote in the Brazilian presidential elections on the basis of micro-data. Two works stand out for covering more than one election (Singer 2000; Carreirão 2002). Singer (2000 analysed the results of surveys carried out nationwide in 1989 and in the state of São Paulo in 1994. One of the book's purposes is to show the association between ideology, measured as voters' posi-Jairo Nicolau bpsr (2007) 1 (1) 126 125 -135

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