Following the Leader Against Democracy? Evidence From the 2022 Brazilian Presidential Election

Fernando Mello and Ignacio Jurado
Additional contact information
Fernando Mello: Department of Social Sciences, University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain
Ignacio Jurado: Institute of Public Goods and Policies, Spanish National Research Council, Spain

Politics and Governance, 2026, vol. 14

Abstract: This article examines the 2022 Brazilian presidential campaign to explore the dynamic relationship between political alignment and electoral trust. We argue that trust in elections is not solely a function of partisanship but is also influenced by exposure to elite narratives and citizens’ expectations about who will win. Using a five-wave panel survey conducted during the 2022 election in Brazil, we analyze both between-individual differences and within-individual changes in vote intention and trust in Brazil’s electronic voting system. Employing within–between models, we separate stable partisan differences from changes associated with individual-level shifts in political alignment. We show that then-President Jair Bolsonaro’s voters consistently expressed lower trust in the electronic voting system compared to other voters. Yet, among Bolsonaro voters, trust in the electronic voting system was significantly higher for those who expected him to win and lower for those who expected him to lose. Critically, exploiting within-person variation, we show that switching vote preference toward Bolsonaro is associated with declines in trust. These findings suggest that elite cues and outcome expectations interact to shape electoral trust.

Keywords: backsliding; Brazil; election; electoral trust; electronic ballot; elite cues; Jair Bolsonaro; Lula da Silva (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernance/article/view/11547 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cog:poango:v14:y:2026:a:11547

DOI: 10.17645/pag.11547

Access Statistics for this article

Politics and Governance is currently edited by Carolina Correia

More articles in Politics and Governance from Cogitatio Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by António Vieira () and IT Department ().