Can politicians make changes of cash transfer policies and lose votes because of it? evidence from brazil’s 2022 presidential elections

Abstract

This work has the objective to evaluate how the implementations and changes in the Conditioned Cash Transfer programs of Bolsa Família, that is also known as Auxílio Brasil, had a trend on electoral outcomes. Using a combination of databases from the Brazilian government agencies of Cadastro Único, Portal da Transparência and Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (TSE), and dif-in-dif models, I find results that show that these implementations had a negative trend on Jair Bolsonaro’s electoral outcomes in the 2022 presidential elections compared to 2018. In order to better validate these results, some models included data on other factors that may have influenced decision on voting, such as credit and intervention from the federal highway police (prf). Even with such, the results stayed negative and with similar dimensions as the ones without them. These results are unprecedented in the context of Brazilian cash transfer programs and voting, which could generate new discussions regarding on how such programs could affect voting.