Fresh from the polls, Brazil is experiencing opposite movements in the engagement of its voters. While Americans, who have optional voting, see their participation rates increase, Brazilians, who have mandatory voting, see a reduction in participation rates.
The country that elected again in the last week of attendance since 2018, both in general and in elections, considering the last 20 years — despite having registered a drop in the last edition compared to the previous one.
In Brazil, attendance fell to its lowest levels in two decades, taking into account the first round of national and municipal elections. Overall, 8 out of 10 voters vote here. There, there are six, or less than five in the case of the intermediate election, seen as a kind of referendum on support for the government.
This year, 63.5% of American citizens eligible to vote participated, second only to 2020. On the other hand, in Brazil, registered in the 2022 presidential election, the lowest rate since 2002.
The two countries have very different electoral systems and cultures. In addition to the mandatory distinction, which here applies to adults aged 18 to 70, the USA allows early voting and voting by mail, and defines the result based on the winner in the states, and not by an absolute majority.
“In the USA, abstention can be decisive, due to the strong polarization and the two-party system. In Brazil it is less decisive for the victory of one candidate or another, because there are many parties”, recalls political scientist Christian Lynch, professor at Uerj ( State University of Rio de Janeiro).
“But abstention has started to have more weight lately in second-round majority elections, with greater polarization here too,” he says, noting that North American candidates are used to encouraging voters to leave home.
“Here you consider that they will leave and that there will be an abstention rate.”
The size of this rate, however, (Superior Electoral Court) in the second round of these municipal elections: 29% did not attend, a level similar to that of 2020, an increase since 2000. “We will have to investigate in each location”, , president of cut, after the results are announced.
Here, it is the court that counts the presence of registered voters, whereas in the United States there is no national electoral body. That’s why the data comes from , from the University of Florida, which has been making projections since 1789, based on presence recorded in state reports.
Among the hypotheses for the drop in participation in Brazil are, on the one hand, the greater ease in the last four years and, on the other, a replacement of blank or invalid votes (both are decreasing) with abstention, according to political scientist Lucas Gelape, who is researching the topic during his post-doctorate at FGV-SP.
He states that studies on the topic are in the initial phase and says he is skeptical about the theory of a , defended by other experts.
“That may be so, but texts from the 1970s already talked about crises of representation, it’s almost like a hallmark of democracy”, he argues. “Furthermore, abstention is higher in large municipalities, there are small municipalities with a rate of just 10%. How can this be explained by the representation crisis? It has to do with very specific disputes.”
The reasons for the increase in American turnout include greater mobilization after Trump’s election — fiercer elections tend to bring more people to the polls. “These are very important issues at stake for voters, and the effort to get people to vote is vital when voting is optional,” says Gelape.
One shows that only 37% of Americans are “consistent voters”, that is, they voted in the three elections between 2018 and 2022. Republicans and Democrats have a balanced turnout level (around 50%), but Trump’s party has benefited from a sociodemographic aspect.
The turnout rate among whites without a college degree — who prefer the president-elect and represent almost half of the electorate — is higher (35%) than that of majority Democratic groups, such as blacks (27%) and Latinos in general (19%) , champions of abstention.
In Brazil, in turn, data available from the TSE show that those who voted least in 2022 are men, young people aged 21 to 29 and people who have completed primary education, although abstention is also growing among the most educated.
This year, the main reasons for absence were: “I don’t vote in the city or I didn’t transfer the title” (18%), “lack of interest in the election or the candidates” (14%) and “polling location too far away” (14%) . In total, a third said they would not go if it were optional — the majority of Brazilians since 2014, with variations over time.
Professor Lynch, from Uerj, believes in an ongoing representation crisis and warns that, in addition to abstention, it can encourage “the opposite.” “Abstention as a symptom of frustration with the system or indifference, and populism as an expression of indignation against the system”, he says.
Gelape, on the other hand, does not think that this abstention has reached such a level as to influence the results in Brazil, but it does cause concern regarding how people are participating in politics: “If they are not even participating in the election, they are not participating in other spaces , and then politicians suffer less supervision and control.”
And how to increase engagement? For him, the solution depends largely on the politicians themselves and less on Electoral Justice awareness campaigns. “Part of their job is to convince voters that they should go vote. That’s what countries with optional voting like the USA teach us,” he says.
