Available via license: CC BY 4.0
Content may be subject to copyright.
Partisan Stereotyping and Polarization
in Brazil
David Samuels
Fernando Mello
Cesar Zucco
ABSTRACT
In recent decades, Brazilian voters have grown polarized between supporters of the
Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’Party, PT), known as petistas, and its
opponents, known as antipetistas. What explains this animosity? One potential
source of polarization is partisan stereotyping, a tendency for partisans to misperceive
the social composition of both their own side’s bases of support as well as their
opponents’. We show that most Brazilians overestimate the extent to which petistas
and antipetistas belong to party-stereotypical groups such as Afro-Brazilians,
evangelical Christians, or poor or rich people. We then show that stereotyping is
associated with polarization: the greater the bias in perceived partisan group
composition, the greater the perceptions of partisan political extremism and feelings
of social distance toward the partisan out-group.
Keywords: partisanship, negative partisanship, polarization, Brazil, petismo,
antipetismo, stereotyping
In the run-up to Brazil’s 2018 general elections, won by conservative populist Jair
Bolsonaro, an online video game called “Bolsomito 2k18”was released and went
viral. “Bolsomito”is a portmanteau from a meme Bolsonaro’s supporters created that
combined his name with the Portuguese word mito—best translated not as its cognate
word “myth”(conventionally, a well-known but false idea) but as “legend,”in its
contemporary American vernacular sense of someone or something exceptional.
The objective of the game was simple and brutal: as Bolsonaro, players must first
beat to death a parade of Black, gay, and feminist activists, and then defeat a herd of
David Samuels is Distinguished McKnight University Professor in the Department of Political
Science, the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA. dsamuels@umn.edu. Fernando Mello
is a postdoctoral research associate at the Carlos III-Juan March Institute, Madrid, Spain.
fernando.barros@uc3m.es. Cesar Zucco is an associate professor at the Brazilian School of
Public Administration and Economics, Getúlio Vargas Foundation, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
cesar.zucco@fgv.br. The authors declare they have no competing interests.
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of University of
Miami. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted
re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
DOI 10.1017/lap.2023.38
https://doi.org/10.1017/lap.2023.38 Published online by Cambridge University Press
donkeys wearing the logo of Bolsonaro’s nemesis, the Workers’Party (Partido dos
Trabalhadores, PT; the word for donkey also means “stupid”in Portuguese). The
moment Bolsonaro killed one of his enemies, they would turn into a pile of feces
represented as the “poo emoji.”
The game’s creators claimed that it was all in good fun.1However, the gameplay
reflects the virulence of contemporary Brazilian political discourse, the country’s deep
political polarization, and—pertinent for present purposes—the spread of partisan
stereotypes. Why did the game’s creators decide to represent petistas—voters who
profess a partisan attachment to the PT—as Afro-Brazilian, gay, or women? Do other
stereotypes come to Brazilians’minds when they think about PT supporters today?
Likewise, what stereotypes come to Brazilians’minds when they think about people on
the other side of the political spectrum—antipetistas, voters who dislike the PT?
We suggest that partisan stereotyping contributes to political polarization in
contemporary Brazil. Voters around the world tend to think about political parties—
those they support as well as those they oppose—in terms of the social groups that
make up a party’s base (Berelson et al. 1954; Converse 1964; Green et al. 2002). For
example, they might associate one party with economic elites and another with the
working class. In the United States, misperceptions about partisan group composition
can be large. For example, Ahler and Sood (2018a, 965) reveal that American voters
dramatically overestimate the proportion of Democrats who are Black or LGBTQ
and Republicans who are white and rich (see also Ahler and Sood 2022).
Just as Ahler and Sood (2018b) found for the United States, the roots of
polarization in Brazil may not lie with parties’actual group composition, but rather with
the extent towhich voters misperceive the proportion of partisan supporters they believe
come from different social groups. As we show below, just like US voters, Brazilians also
tend to overestimate the proportion of partisans who belong to “stereotypical”groups.
These misperceptions, in turn, contribute to polarization—because voters’positive or
negative sentiments about the groups they believe make up parties’vote bases shape the
depth of their in-group favoritism and out-group animosity.
1. P
ARTISANSHIP AND
P
OLARIZATION IN
B
RAZIL
Brazil’s electorate is polarized between petistas and antipetistas (Samuels and Zucco
2018). Members of the former group express a positive partisan attachment to the PT
in the traditional sense. However, antipetistas dislike the PT but do not, in general,
strongly identify with any other party. They are purely negative partisans and have no
“in-group”with which they affiliate, associate, or identify.
Antipetismo long predates Bolsonaro—indeed, it has grown in tandem with the
PT since the party’s emergence in the 1980s, while Bolsonaro did not capture the
hearts and votes of antipetistas until his 2018 presidential candidacy and failed
reelection campaign in 2022. He did not create antipetismo, nor did he unify
antipetistas under a single partisan banner.2Meanwhile, petistas identify with the PT
but do not necessarily also express negative partisanship toward any other party.3Since
2 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY
https://doi.org/10.1017/lap.2023.38 Published online by Cambridge University Press
the 1990s, these positive and negative partisan attitudes have powerfully shaped voter
policy attitudes and candidate choice in Brazil.
The dynamic of polarization in Brazil is distinct from countries such as the United
States, where supporters of parties on opposite sides of the political spectrum clash. Brazil is
an interesting case for exploring how partisan stereotyping can polarize because historically,
neither positive nor negative partisanship has been rooted in deep ideological,
socioeconomic, or cultural cleavages. Before 2018, age, gender, education, religiosity,
social class, race, left–right ideology and an urban–rural divide did not distinguish petistas
from antipetistas, or did so only minimally (Samuels and Zucco 2018).
Since that year, a limited amount of sociodemographic “sorting”between petistas
and antipetistas has occurred (Amaral 2020; Nicolau 2020;Smith2019). For example,
Layton and colleagues (2021) note that although demographics have not historically
predicted positive or negative partisanship, Bolsonaro’s2018campaigndividedvotersto
some degree on race, religion, and gender.4Similarly, summarizing results of the 2022
election, Hunter and Power (2023) revealed that Lula did better among Catholics,
women, the poor, and Afro-Brazilians, while Bolsonaro did better among more affluent
voters, whites, evangelicals, and men (see also Araújo 2022 and Renn´o 2022).
The emergence of such divides may contribute to stereotyping about the
prevalence of certain demographic groups among petistas and/or antipetistas. Voters
form beliefs about the group basis of partisan composition via the mass media—
through violent video games and countless other channels—which popularize
particular images of parties and their supporters (Levendusky and Malhotra 2015).
These images are then filtered through conversations about politics with others (Baker
et al. 2006). Given media portrayals of petistas and antipetistas, our first hypothesis
suggests simply that Brazilian voters overestimate the “stereotypical”group
membership of both petistas and antipetistas.
H1. Voters overestimate the share of partisans (petistas and antipetistas) who belong to
“stereotypical”groups.
Because voters form beliefs about thegroup basis of partisan composition via media
exposure and by engaging in conversations about politics, interest and/or engagement in
politics should be associated with stereotyping. Individuals who are active and interested
in politics are more likely to fixate on stereotypes due to Kahneman and Tversky’s
(1972)conceptof“representativeness bias,”which exaggerates the prevalence of
stereotypical groups among all those who make up a party’s base. Moreover, in Brazil, as
elsewhere, there is a strong correlation between political interest and (positive and/or
negative) partisanship. This suggests the following two hypotheses:
H2. Positive and/or negative partisans will overestimate the share of petistas and
antipetistas who belong to “stereotypical”groups to a greater extent than nonpartisans.
H3. Interest in politics should be associated with greater stereotyping of partisan groups.
SAMUELS ET AL.: PARTISAN STEREOTYPING AND POLARIZATION IN BRAZIL 3
https://doi.org/10.1017/lap.2023.38 Published online by Cambridge University Press
Once we determine whether and the extent to which voters stereotype the group
composition of petistas and antipetistas, the key question is whether such
misperceptions are associated with polarization. The greater the bias in perceived
partisan group composition, the greater the perceptions of partisan extremism and of
difference in the preferences of the groups, and the greater the feelings of social distance
toward the partisan out-group. Stereotyping can drive polarization because it gives voters
a mental shortcut to locate their own position on the issues vis-à-vis the other party’s
supporters (Abramowitz and Saunders 2006; Kuo et al. 2017;Mutz1998).
Misperceptions of partisan group membership should thus be associated with
biased perceptions of political and social distance between rival parties, because voters
typically associate relatively narrow policy demands with each party-stereotypical
group (Ahler and Sood 2018b). For example, voters might assume that “the rich want
lower taxes,”or “ethnic group ‘X’wants policies that favor their group.”In short,
although partisans in general should perceive greater polarization than nonpartisans,
to the extent that voters overestimate the size of stereotypical groups as a proportion of
a party’s supporters, they are more likely to conclude that those groups hold
disproportionate sway within that party. This should fuel perceptions of policy
extremism, which generates two additional hypotheses:
H4. Partisans will perceive greater polarization between petistas and antipetistas than
nonpartisans do.
H5. Stereotyping will be associated with greater perceptions of polarization between
petistas and antipetistas.
In the next section we describe how we measure our key concepts: partisanship,
stereotyping, and perceptions of political and social polarization. Subsequently, we
explore the relationships between these variables.
2. D
ATA AND
M
EASUREMENT
In early 2022, we fielded a nationally representative survey of 5,400 Brazilian adults
through the Instituto Brasileiro de Pesquisa e Análise de Dados (Brazilian Institute of
Research and Data Analysis, IBPAD), a private firm.5In this section we describe how
we defined and measured partisanship, stereotyping, and our measures of political and
social polarization. In the subsequent section we use these to test our hypotheses.
Defining Partisan Groups
Following Samuels and Zucco (2018), our survey first asked respondents both positive
and negative partisanship questions to place them into one of three relevant groups:
petistas, antipetistas, or nonpartisans. Our first question asked, “Is there a political party
that you like?”If the responsewas positive, a follow-up question offered a drop-down list
4 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY
https://doi.org/10.1017/lap.2023.38 Published online by Cambridge University Press
of the nine largest parties in Brazil’s legislature at the time, plus an “other”category.
Respondents who answered “yes”and “PT”were classified as petistas.
We identified antipetistas similarly. First, a negative partisanship question asked,
“Is there a party that you do not like?”and again, if the response was positive, a follow-
up question presented the same drop-down list (see appendix details). Antipetistas
include anyone who said “yes”to the negative partisanship question and selected the
PT as the party they do not like.
In line with other recent national surveys fielded around the same time as ours, 24
percent of respondents identified as petistas. In terms of antipetistas, Samuels and
Zucco (2018) found that in 2014, 21 percent of Brazilians identified as such. Since
Bolsonaro’s 2018 election, polarization in Brazil has intensified. Unsurprisingly
therefore, 29 percent of respondents in our survey identified as antipetistas. We
consider the remaining 47 percent of respondents to be nonpartisans, which is also in
line with long-term estimates (see appendix Bfor further details).
For those who answered “yes”to the positive or negative partisanship questions,
we also measured the strength of partisanship by asking whether respondents
considered themselves a “typical”petista or antipetista. Of the 24 percent of
respondents who identified as a petista, about 40 percent (10 percent of all
respondents) said they considered themselves “typical.”We refer to these as “strong”
petistas. Meanwhile, of the 29 percent of respondents who disliked the PT, about two-
thirds (17 percent of all respondents) considered themselves “strong”antipetistas.
Measuring Partisan Stereotyping
To explore partisan stereotypes, we first had to establish the true proportions of
partisans who belong to different demographic groups. We asked all respondents
about their (1) income, (2) race, (3) state of residence, (4) gender, (5) religion, and
(6) age. Answers to these questions provide the actual, real-world distribution of social
groups both in the electorate overall and within each partisan group.6
Combining partisanship with these demographic questions allows us to reveal
which groups are, in fact, over- or underrepresented among petistas and antipetistas.
In figure 1, the circles provide the percentage by which different demographic groups
among petistas and antipetistas are over- or underrepresented as compared against
their actual proportion in Brazil’s overall population. That is, if the circle is found at
zero, the group in question is represented among petistas and antipetistas similarly to
its proportion in the overall population.
Among petistas, actually overrepresented groups include those with low income,
those from Brazil’s Northeast region, nonwhites, women, and voters who are
irreligious (agnostic and atheist). Among antipetistas, overrepresented groups include
whites, evangelical Protestants, older and high-income voters, and men. The degree of
over- or underrepresentation in figure 1is measured in absolute terms, meaning that
small differences can be substantively important if the group in question has relatively
few members in society—as is the case, for example, with rich voters and irreligious
people.
SAMUELS ET AL.: PARTISAN STEREOTYPING AND POLARIZATION IN BRAZIL 5
https://doi.org/10.1017/lap.2023.38 Published online by Cambridge University Press
Our next step assessed respondents’perceptions of the size of different groups
among petistas and antipetistas. To do so, we asked participants to estimate the
percentage of petistas and/or antipetistas in each party-stereotypical group. We relied
on common tropes in Brazilian media about supporters and opponents of the PT
(Davis and Straubhaar 2020; Evangelista and Bruno 2019; Pinheiro-Machado and de
Freixo 2019; Prado 2021), and included only standard demographic categories rather
than sensitive groups that might have returned inaccurate self-classification to begin
with (e.g., LGBTQpeople).
As such, we asked participants to estimate the percentage of petistas who are
(1) low-income earners (those who earn up to twice Brazil’s monthly minimum wage);
(2) nonwhite (those who self-identify as Black or brown as opposed to white or
“yellow,”the standard census categories in Brazil); (3) from states in Brazil’s Northeast
region; (4) women; and (5) irreligious (i.e., those who self-identify as atheistic or
agnostic as opposed to Catholic, evangelical Christian, or another religion). Similarly,
we asked respondents to estimate the proportion of antipetistas who (1) are older (the
category “60 years or older”in our survey); (2) earn more than 20 times the monthly
minimum wage; (3) identify as evangelicals; (4) are white; and (5) are men.
Respondents typed their estimate, between 0 and 100, in a box next to each
group. The order of petista and antipetista batteries was randomized, as was the order
of groups within each battery. We then compared respondents’estimates with the true
percentages in each category, as reported above. Thus, although figure 1revealed that
several demographic groups are in fact overrepresented relative to the population
among either petistas or antipetistas, figure 2reveals that when we compare the actual
Figure 1. True Size of Partisan Sociodemographic Groups
6 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY
https://doi.org/10.1017/lap.2023.38 Published online by Cambridge University Press
percentages against perceived group composition, we see that voters systematically
stereotype, overestimating the share of particular groups among supporters of
each side.
For nine out of the 10 categories, participants overestimated the proportion of
each group among petistas and/or antipetistas. For example, figure 2shows that
Brazilians believe that older, high-income, and Protestant (evangelical Christian)
individuals comprise a substantially larger proportion of antipetistas than they actually
do. Likewise, they believe that poor people, Northeasterners, and irreligious people
comprise a substantially larger proportion of petistas than they actually do. The
smallest misperceptions are racial: on average, Brazilian voters estimate that about 59
percent of petistas are nonwhite, and 59 percent of antipetistas white. These
misperceptions are only slightly higher than the true proportions.
Figure 2provides a snapshot that summarizes the extent of stereotyping across all
respondents. Of course, individual (mis)perceptions might differ dramatically from
the average. Thus, our next step was to create an individual-level indicator that
summarizes the extent to which respondents stereotype about the composition of each
partisan group. To do so we calculated a variation of Ahler and Sood’s(2018b)
“Average Perceptual Bias”(APB) score, which averages individuals’estimates of the
proportion of different stereotypical categories. For each group category jand each
individual i, APB is calculated as follows:
Figure 2. Misperception versus Reality: Average Partisan Stereotypes for Petistas
(Left Panel) and Antipetistas (Right Panel)
SAMUELS ET AL.: PARTISAN STEREOTYPING AND POLARIZATION IN BRAZIL 7
https://doi.org/10.1017/lap.2023.38 Published online by Cambridge University Press
APBg
i1
njX
J
j1
EstimatedPctg
ji T rue Pct g
j
where Estimted Pctg
ji is respondent i’s perception of the share of group gthat belongs to
stereotypical category j21;5and T rue Pct g
jis the true share of group gthat belongs
to stereotypical category j, both of which were computed from answers respondents
gave to our survey. (This means, of course, that APB can be negative or positive.)7
Are respondents’partisan stereotypes systematic, or random? If the former, APB
should be positive for each voter, for each party. We find that 90 percent of all
individuals consistently overestimate perceptions of group membership of petistas,
and 93 percent do so toward antipetistas, suggesting that stereotyping is systematic
across most voters.
Thus far, we have provided initial evidence supporting H1. On average, Brazilian
voters do stereotype the demographic bases of both petismo and antipetismo. We also
defined how we calculate Average Perceptual Bias, which assesses the average degree to
which individuals stereotype, in expected directions, the demographic composition of
both partisan groups. In section 3below, we use APB as the principal independent
variable to assess our hypotheses that stereotyping is associated with political and social
polarization.
Measuring Policy Polarization
Once we have assessed the partisanship of respondents and their (mis)perceptions of
partisan group composition, we need a measure of their perceptions of polarization.
To do so, we first asked where respondents stood on five policy propositions,
randomly chosen out of a set of 10 that are listed in table 1. For each issue, we asked
respondents how much they agreed or disagreed with the policy, on a four-point Likert
scale. To facilitate interpretation of results, we recoded the polarity of the answers so
that for all questions the results express the degree to which respondents agree with the
conservative position. We then computed the proportion of each partisan group that
agreed with the conservative position in each statement by combining the “agree
completely”and “agree”answers.
Perceptions of polarization, of course, may differ widely from the actual degree to
which petistas and antipetistas differ on policy. Petistas and antipetistas may believe,
for example, that members of the two groups are much further apart on a particular
policy than they actually are. To assess perceptions of partisan polarization, we asked
respondents to estimate the percentage of petistas and antipetistas who agreed with the
same policy statements, on a 0–100 scale. Figure 3shows the gap between the actual
proportion of members of each partisan group who agree with the conservative
position for each proposition and the perceived gap between petistas and antipetistas,
among all respondents. In figure 3, if either the actual level of support for a policy or
the perceived level of support for a policy in both partisan groups is exactly the same,
the gap between groups will be zero. Cases where more petistas than antipetistas take
8 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY
https://doi.org/10.1017/lap.2023.38 Published online by Cambridge University Press
the conservative position will generate a “positive”policy gap (greater than zero), while
the opposite situation will generate a “negative”policy gap (less than zero).
For example, suppose that half of petistas agree with the conservative position
while 60 percent of antipetistas do. We calculate the policy gap by subtracting the
share of antipetistas who agree with the conservative position from the share of petistas
who agree with the same position. In this case, the result would be 10. Because
petistas are almost always less conservative than antipetistas and because voters tend to
perceive petistas as less conservative than antipetistas, both the actual and perceived
differences in the figure are almost always negative.
Focusing first on the empty circles (the true differences), figure 3reveals that on
some issues—appointment of military or police officials to government positions,
same sex marriage, criminal conviction disallowing political candidacies, gun control,
and abortion—petistas and antipetistas hold substantively distinct positions (greater
than 20 points, on average). In contrast, other issues—the environment, gas prices,
and reducing inequality—petistas and antipetistas hold nearly the same views (less
than a 10-point difference).8Finally, on church tax exemptions, petistas and
antipetistas hold almost exactly the same views.
Table 1. Wording of Issue Questions
Question Inverted
1. The government should adopt strong policies to combat deforestation and to
preserve the environment.
Yes
2. The government should be obliged to combat racism and racial discrimination. Yes
3. Military personnel and police officers currently serving should be prohibited
from working in politically appointed positions in the federal government.
Yes
4. Individuals who’ve lost all judicial appeals in criminal court should be
prohibited from running for elective office.
No
5. The government should facilitate access to possession of and carrying of fire-
arms.
No
6. The government should implement policies that reduce income inequality in
Brazil.
Yes
7. Homosexual couples should have the right to legally marry. Yes
8. The government should intervene to limit excessive increases in the price of
household cooking gas.
Yes
9. The government should maintain the policy of not charging taxes on churches,
as is the policy today.
No
10. Abortion, in the early stages of pregnancy, should be decriminalized and
available through the public health service.
Yes
SAMUELS ET AL.: PARTISAN STEREOTYPING AND POLARIZATION IN BRAZIL 9
https://doi.org/10.1017/lap.2023.38 Published online by Cambridge University Press
Meanwhile, the solid circles reveal that in almost every case, perceptions of policy
differences diverge from the true differences. Figure 3shows that for five items, voters
believe that differences between petistas and antipetistas are larger than they actually are.
Notice, however, that perceived differences are larger than actual differences only for
policy issues where petistas and antipetistas actually hold relatively similar positions. For
example, respondents believe that petistas are much less conservative than antipetistas
on the question of reducing inequality than they actually are. In fact, antipetistas and
petistas do not differ a great deal on this question. In contrast, on issues where members
of the two groups actually disagree to a greater extent, voters on average believe the two
partisan groups are closer to each other than they actually are. For one issue—limiting
the appointment of active military personnel to political positions—perceived
differences among all respondents are much smaller than actual differences.
Some of the counterintuitive results in figure 3may derive from the fact that the
figure assesses and pools the true and perceived gaps among all participants in our
survey—partisans as well as nonpartisans. On average, Brazilian voters do tend to see
petistas as less conservative than antipetistas. However, perceptions of policy
differences may vary both within and between petistas and antipetistas. In section 3
below, to assess these “perception gaps”at the individual level, we use two distinct
measures. Our first is the Policy Perception Gap (PPG, Gapij ), which takes the
Figure 3. True and Perceived Policy Gaps
10 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY
https://doi.org/10.1017/lap.2023.38 Published online by Cambridge University Press
absolute differences in the estimates each individual gives for the share of petistas and
antipetistas who adopt the conservative position on five policy questions randomly
selected out of our list of 10. The average PPG in the entire sample is 35, with a
standard deviation of 32.9
Our second measure of perceived polarization follows Ahler and Sood (2018b) to
indicate the share of each group g2petista;antipetista
that each respondent i
thinks takes on the conservative position on each issue j. Every respondent estimated
this share 10 times—once for both petistas and antipetistas for the five issues they
evaluated.10
Why two measures? The first is an aggregate indicator of perceived policy
polarization, by respondent. It measures the overall perceived “distance”between the
partisan groups, which is why we use absolute values. However, this measure does not
tell us whether these differences are driven by perceptions of either or both groups. By
contrast, our second measure considers the extent to which each respondent expects
members of each partisan group to hold group-consistent policy attitudes on a liberal–
conservative scale. It is defined for each respondent separately for their attitudes
toward petistas and antipetistas, therefore allowing us to capture differences in
perceptions toward each group separately.
Measuring Perceived Social Distance
As just explained, we expect Average Perceptual Bias—stereotyping—to be associated
with both of our measures of policy polarization. In addition, we expect stereotyping to
be associated with perceived “social distance”between petistas and antipetistas, a form
of social polarization. We measured social distance with a battery of questions that
asked respondents how close or distant they felt toward the partisan out-group, on a
five-point Likert scale. Table 2provides the wording of all items. We averaged these
responses into a Partisan Social Distance Index (PSDI) (toward the out-group),
measured for each individual, following Ahler and Sood (2018b). Respondents only
answered questions related to their out-group. That is, the petista/Lula versions of the
questions were presented to antipetistas, while the antipetista/Bolsonaro versions were
presented to petistas.11 In the next section, we also use partisan social distance toward
the out-group as a dependent variable to assess H5.
Table 2. Wording of the Social Distance Questions
Thinking of the situations below, how happy or unhappy would you feel in each case?
The marriage of a close relative with a [petista][antipetista]
Having to work with someone who [supports][opposes] the PT and who likes to talk about
politics at work
A neighbor who puts up a sign that says [“Bolsonaro for president”][“Lula for president”]
If [Bolsonaro][Lula] received a medal from an international organization for his work
SAMUELS ET AL.: PARTISAN STEREOTYPING AND POLARIZATION IN BRAZIL 11
https://doi.org/10.1017/lap.2023.38 Published online by Cambridge University Press
3. P
ARTISAN
S
TEREOTYPING AND
P
OLARIZATION
Having presented our key measures, we now assess the strength of empirical support
for our hypotheses relating partisan stereotyping to different forms of polarization.
First, we explore H2, breaking respondents down by (the strength of) their partisan
attachments. We then consider H3, exploring the impact of political interest on
stereotyping. We then turn to our two hypotheses about perceived policy polarization,
H4—that partisans will perceive greater polarization distance between petistas and
antipetistas than nonpartisans—and H5—that stereotyping should also be associated
with greater perceived polarization between the two partisan groups, controlling for
partisanship and interest in politics.
Patterns of Partisan Stereotyping
Figure 2showed that all voters stereotype. Building on previous support for H1 (that
all voters misperceive the share of partisans who belong to stereotypical groups),
figure 4reports the Average Perceptual Bias toward petistas and antipetistas. This
figure differentiates “strong”petistas and antipetistas from other partisans, and
compares them against nonpartisans. These results thus put H2 to the test, revealing
the extent of stereotyping by partisan group.
The results for “strong petistas”and “petistas”in the left and right panels indicate
that petistas stereotype themselves to about the same degree as they stereotype
antipetistas (a little less than 30 points on average; the difference is not statistically
significant). Nonpartisans, for their part, stereotype antipetistas about five points more
on average than they do petistas. Meanwhile, somewhat surprisingly, antipetistas
(including “strong”antipetistas) stereotype petistas significantly less than they
stereotype themselves—the difference is about fourteen points. To be sure, on average
antipetistas still overestimate the proportion of “stereotypical”groups that make up
the PT’s base (by about 14 points). However, they exaggerate the stereotypical
composition of their own base even more.
These results contrast with what Ahler and Sood (2018b, 965) reported for the
United States, where partisans stereotype more than nonpartisans and partisans
stereotype the composition of the out-party’s base more than their own party’s. In
Brazil, everyone stereotypes the composition of petistas’and antipetistas’bases, and
neither positive nor negative partisans stereotype the out-group more than their own
in-group.
These findings are somewhat surprising for two reasons. First, although scholars
have focused on the virulence of antipetismo in recent years (Lacerda 2019; Lynch and
Cassimiro 2022; Nicolau 2020; Prado 2021), our results indicate that everyone in
Brazil stereotypes, including petistas and voters with no particular partisan leaning.
Second, our results confound social-psychological theories that suggest individuals
tend to exaggerate the weight of negative versus positive information (about disliked
groups, in this case) (Rozin and Royzman 2001). The potentially distinct
psychological motivations driving partisan stereotyping in Brazil versus the United
12 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY
https://doi.org/10.1017/lap.2023.38 Published online by Cambridge University Press
States merit further exploration, and we return to this question in our conclusion. In
any case, explaining this contrast is beyond the scope of the present paper. Here, our
goals are to confirm that voters stereotype—both their own group and the opposing
group—and then confirm that stereotyping shapes polarization.
Finally, figure 5reports Average Perceptual Bias toward petistas and antipetistas—
the same measure in the previous figure—according to level of political interest. These
figures evaluate H3, which suggests that interest in politics should be correlated with
stereotyping. On the one hand, stereotyping of antipetistas follows expectations, with
high-interest individuals holding more biased perceptions about that group’s
composition. Yet on the other hand, there is no evidence that interest in politics is
correlated with stereotyping of petistas.
Figure 4. Average Perception Bias by Group Membership.
a. APB toward Petistas. b. APB toward Antipetistas
Figure 5. Average Perception Bias by Level of Interest in Politics.
a. APB toward Petistas. b. APB toward Antipetistas
SAMUELS ET AL.: PARTISAN STEREOTYPING AND POLARIZATION IN BRAZIL 13
https://doi.org/10.1017/lap.2023.38 Published online by Cambridge University Press
Additional research is necessary to understand why even low-interest voters
stereotype both sides to such a significant degree (about 20 points for petistas and 25
points for antipetistas), and why level of political interest among all voters is unrelated
to stereotyping of petistas. At any rate, the finding for antipetistas suggests that it
remains important for us to control for interest in politics moving forward.
What emerges most clearly from our results thus far is confirmation of H1: in
Brazil, everyone stereotypes both petistas and antipetistas—including nonpartisans and
those with low political interest. When we test for whether partisanship and/or interest
in politics (H2 and H3) attenuates this relationship, the results are mixed. These
results suggest that we should continue to control for both partisanship and interest in
politics as we test the remaining hypotheses, which explore the relationship between
stereotyping and perceptions of polarization.
Perceived Policy Polarization
All Brazilian voters stereotype the group composition of petistas and antipetistas, to
greater or lesser degrees. Not surprisingly, they all also perceive policy differences
between partisan groups. However, confirming H4, table 3reveals that partisans
perceive significantly larger PPGs between groups than nonpartisans. To obtain these
results, recall that we pooled responses to all policies listed in table 1by individual, and
then controlled for partisan group and political interest.
Starting with model 1, the intercept suggests that nonpartisans estimate that the
share of antipetistas who take the conservative position to be about 29 points higher
than the share of petistas who take that position, on average across all issues. Results
from that same model also confirm that partisans perceive greater polarization between
partisan groups, by approximately 10 points each.
These results remain unchanged in model 2 when we control for issue fixed
effects. Model 3 offers further confirmation of the independent effect of partisanship
on perceived polarization. As hypothesized, controlling for respondents’interest in
politics reduces but does not wash out the effect of partisanship on perceived
polarization. Taken together, these results suggest that although all Brazilians perceive
large policy differences between petistas and antipetistas (even nonpartisans, who tend
to exhibit a low degree of interest in politics), perceived polarization is higher among
partisans on both sides.
Does Stereotyping Drive Polarization?
We now arrive at the crux of the matter. We have shown that everyone stereotypes and
that everyone perceives considerable policy polarization between petistas and
antipetistas, but that partisans tend to perceive even more polarization between the
two groups. At this point we will test H5, the extent to which perceived polarization is
a function of stereotyping, controlling for partisanship and political interest.
In this section we use both of our measures of perceived polarization. We already
know from table 3that partisans see larger policy gaps between groups than
14 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY
https://doi.org/10.1017/lap.2023.38 Published online by Cambridge University Press
nonpartisans, but now we want to know whether perceptions of policy polarization are
also associated with Average Perceptual Bias—that is, with stereotyping. To start, we
estimate the following equation with the PPG as the outcome variable:
Gapij β1APBg
iXiφjεij
where APBg
iis the average level of stereotyping of group composition by respondent i
toward group g,Xiis a set of covariates including indicators for whether the
respondent was petista or antipetista (nonpartisans are the baseline category) and an
indicator for high interest in politics, and φjare issue fixed effects. Standard errors are
clustered at the respondent level (each respondent answered five different questions).
We estimate variations of equation 2 separately for APB toward each party. H5
leads us to expect a positive value on all coefficients on APB, which would indicate that
stereotyping enhances perceptions of policy polarization between petistas and
antipetistas. Table 4confirms this expectation. The six models report the association
between stereotyping and PPG for petistas and antipetistas separately. The first three
models show that as APB toward petistas increases, so do perceived issue differences
between the two partisan groups. Meanwhile, the last three models show that
stereotyping (APB) toward antipetistas is even more powerfully associated with
perceptions of that group’s average policy position. The coefficients on APB are either
strengthened (in the case of stereotyping of petistas) or hold up (in the case of bias
toward antipetistas) once we control for partisanship and interest in politics. These
results are solid and clear: the more a person stereotypes, the greater the perceived
policy polarization.
What is the substantive significance of the coefficients on APB in table 4? For
example, model 2 suggests that a one standard deviation increase in APB toward
Table 3. Partisans Perceive Greater Policy Polarization
(1) (2) (3)
(Intercept) 29.17***
(1.22)
Petista 9.63*** 9.45*** 7.02***
(2.19) (2.18) (0.85)
Antipetista 10.52*** 10.20*** 4.55***
(2.26) (2.24) (0.75)
High interest 10.58***
(0.67)
N 27,000 27,000 27,000
Individuals 5,400 5,400 5,400
*** p<0.001; ** p<0.01; * p<0.05; p<0.1
SAMUELS ET AL.: PARTISAN STEREOTYPING AND POLARIZATION IN BRAZIL 15
https://doi.org/10.1017/lap.2023.38 Published online by Cambridge University Press
petistas (row 1) is associated with an increase in the perceived gap between petistas’and
antipetistas’policy views of about 2.1 points. Results for APB toward antipetistas (row
2) are stronger, with a one standard deviation increase in APB associated with an
increase in 5.1 points in perceived policy polarization. Respondents who stereotype to
an even greater degree tend to perceive an even larger gap between the groups—up to
19 points for bias toward antipetistas and 7 points for bias toward petistas.
These results suggest that (1) everyone stereotypes petistas’and antipetistas’
demographic group composition, and (2) everyone also perceives policy differences
between petistas and antipetistas. Specifically, an average nonpartisan who is not
interested in politics sees a difference of about 30 percentage points in the share of
petistas and antipetistas who take the conservative position on the issues. However,
partisans perceive even greater policy gaps between the two sides, by up to about 10
points on a 100-point scale (see above). What is more, as predicted, Average
Perceptual Bias—stereotyping—further exacerbates these perceptions of polarization
between petistas and antipetistas. An individual with a median level of APB toward the
PT sees the partisan groups as about three points further apart, while a respondent
with a median level of APB toward antipetistas adds about eight additional points.
All in all, for partisans on both sides, adding in an average level of stereotyping
increases the perceived policy gap by about another 11 points—an increase of about
25 percent over and above the effect for everyone (about 30 points) and the effect of
partisanship (about 10 points)—to about 50 points on the 100-point scale. All voters
perceive some degree of polarization between petistas and antipetistas. Partisans
Table 4. People Who Stereotype More Perceive Greater Differences between Groups
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
APBPT 0.06 0.11*** 0.11***
(0.05) (0.02) (0.02)
APBantiPT 0.27*** 0.27*** 0.24***
(0.04) (0.04) (0.04)
Petista 9.34*** 6.42*** 9.10*** 6:4
(0.86) (0.86) (2.11) (2.12)
Antipetista 6.87*** 5.22*** 1.05*** 8.32***
(0.76) (0.76) (2.14) (2.00)
High interest 10.57*** 11.24***
(0.67) (1.64)
N 27,000 27,000 27,000 27,000 27,000 27,000
Individuals 5,400 5,400 5,400 5,400 5,400 5,400
*** p<0.001; ** p<0.01; * p<0.05; p<0.1
16 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY
https://doi.org/10.1017/lap.2023.38 Published online by Cambridge University Press
perceive even more—but stereotyping among partisans further exacerbates the
perceived distance between partisan groups.
To further support H5, we now assess polarization using our second measure of
perceived policy polarization. Here, instead of assessing the “gap”between groups, we
measure the degree to which respondents believe petistas and antipetistas take the
conservative position on policy questions. To estimate the relationship between
partisan stereotyping (APB) and this measure of polarization, we use the following
equation:
Conservativeg
ij β1APBg
iXiφjεg
ij
where the outcome is the percentage of group gthat respondent ibelieves takes on the
conservative position on issue j. The right-hand terms are defined exactly as in
equation 2, above. We estimated this equation with and without control variables
(represented by Xi), all of which are dichotomous and measured at the level of the
individual (whether individuals are petista or antipetista, and whether they are highly
interested in politics). We also included issue fixed effects (φj), and clustered standard
errors by individuals.
Per H5, we expect stereotyping (measured by APB) of group gto be associated
with respondents’perceptions of greater group-consistent policy positions for each
group. That is, stereotyping should be associated with stronger beliefs that antipetistas
will be more likely and petistas less likely to adopt the conservative position on each
policy question. Because the group-consistent position for antipetistas on all issues is
conservative, and because we coded conservative positions as having higher values, for
this measure we expect positive coefficients on APB for antipetistas but negative
coefficients for petistas.
As above, table 5presents our results separately for petistas (the first three models)
and antipetistas (the last three models). Greater APB toward petistas is indeed
associated with perceiving petistas as less likely to adopt conservative positions and
antipetistas as more likely to do so. Substantively, a one standard deviation change in
APB about petistas is associated with about a 0.1 standard deviation change in the
perceived share of group members taking on group-consistent positions. In
comparison with a respondent who does not stereotype at all (APB 0), an
individual with extreme APB toward petistas will believe petistas are about 10 points
“more progressive,”while extreme bias in the other direction is associated with an
increase in the belief that antipetistas will take the conservative position by eight
points. As the theory suggests, people who believe stereotypical groups dominate the
support base of either side also tend to believe that the other side takes more extreme
political positions than their own side.
Results in table 5also indicate that stereotyping is associated with perceptions of
polarization (of each side taking “group-consistent”positions) even when controlling
for partisan group membership (models 2 and 5) as well as political interest (models 3
and 6). Overall, our results are strikingly similar to Ahler and Sood (2018b), even
though Brazil’s highly fragmented party system is rather different from the two-party
system in the United States.
SAMUELS ET AL.: PARTISAN STEREOTYPING AND POLARIZATION IN BRAZIL 17
https://doi.org/10.1017/lap.2023.38 Published online by Cambridge University Press
Table 5. People with Strongest Partisan Group Stereotypes See Partisans as More Likely to Take Group-Consistent Policy Positions
Proportion PT Conservative Proportion AntiPT Conservative
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
APBPT −0.17*** −0.16*** −0.15***
(0.03) (0.04) (0.01)
APBantiPT 0.11*** 0.11*** 0.10***
(0.03) (0.03) (0.03)
Petista −4.26*** −2.50*** 3.42* 2.24
(1.28) (0.49) (1.47) (1.49)
Antipetista 0.17 0.16 −3.87*** −4.64***
(1.36) (0.50) (1.08) (1.05)
High interest −4.94*** 4.99***
(0.41) (1.07)
N 27,000 27,000 27,000 27,000 27,000 27,000
Individuals 5,400 5,400 5,400 5,400 5,400 5,400
*** p<0.001; ** p<0.01; * p<0.05; p<0.1
18 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY
https://doi.org/10.1017/lap.2023.38 Published online by Cambridge University Press
In summary, we find strong support for H5 across our two measures of perceived
policy polarization. Partisans perceive greater polarization than nonpartisans, and
stereotyping of the composition of partisan groups tends to compound this dynamic,
adding to perceptions of policy extremism between petistas and antipetistas.
Is Stereotyping Related to Desire for Social Distance
between Partisan Groups?
Our final analysis explores the relationship between partisan stereotyping and our
second form of polarization: individuals’desire for social distance between partisan
groups. The main explanatory variable is, again, our APB indicator of average group
stereotyping. As described above, our outcome measure here is the PSDI constructed
by combining answers to a four-item question battery. Analysis is similar to the
previous estimations, but our outcome toward each group is now estimated at the
individual level (as opposed to individual-issue level). Hence, we estimate variants of
the following model:
PSDIg
iβ1APBg
iXiεg
i
In contrast to our analyses of perceived policy distance, where we asked partisans to
assess themselves, petistas, and antipetistas, PSDIg
iis measured only toward an
individual’s“out-group.”Given this, we exclude nonpartisans from further analysis.
That is, we estimate separate regressions for subsets of individuals for whom the out-
group is either petistas or antipetistas, and subsequently pool the two groups.
Our PSDI was constructed such that higher values mean (desire for) greater social
distance, and given this, H5 implies that estimates for β1should be positive. Table 6
confirms that ABP is indeed associated with desire for greater social distance for
petistas relative to antipetistas. Results for antipetistas relative to petistas are in the
expected direction, but the coefficient is smaller and noisier. However, when we pool
the two groups (models 5 and 6), results are statistically significant and hold even
when we control for partisanship and political interest.12 In short, results again
confirm that stereotyping is associated with a desire for greater social distance from
those in a partisan out-group, as well as with greater perceived policy distance.
C
ONCLUSION
What are the roots of partisan polarization in Brazil? To some extent, the answer to this
question is rooted in perceptions of policy differences. As our results reveal, even
Brazilians who are relatively uninterested in politics and who have no partisan leanings
already believe that petistas and antipetistas hold distinct policy views. Moreover,
unsurprisingly, petistas and antipetistas believe the distance between groups to be even
larger. That is, partisanship itself contributes to perceptions of polarization.
In this paper we showed that misperceptions of the group composition of both
sides’bases of support further exacerbate perceived policy polarization. That is,
polarization in Brazil is not just about whether voters like or dislike a party and the
SAMUELS ET AL.: PARTISAN STEREOTYPING AND POLARIZATION IN BRAZIL 19
https://doi.org/10.1017/lap.2023.38 Published online by Cambridge University Press
policies it stands for. It is also rooted in voters’biased perceptions of partisan group
composition and their like or dislike for those groups and their demands.
Polarization in Brazil has deepened in recent decades. As Samuels and Zucco
(2018) explain, antipetismo grew—and grew in intensity—in tandem with the rise of
the PT in the 1980s and 90s. However, although all nine second-round presidential
elections since 1989 have been between the PT’s candidate and a rival party’s
candidate, polarization between petistas and antipetistas has grown only slowly. For
much of the past 30-plus years, conservative Brazilians did not have a viable
presidential candidate or a party to represent their interests. Instead, in presidential
elections between 1994 and 2014 Brazilian voters faced a choice between the PT’s
candidates and a centrist from the Party of Brazilian Social Democracy (PSDB). Only
since 2018 has the PT-PSDB duopoly been broken, when the PSDB faded and a
standard-bearer emerged for conservative voters. Still, no conservative party has
emerged to help cultivate antipetismo.
Our results highlight that polarization can emerge in multiparty contexts just as
easily as in two-party systems, and even where one group of voters develops only negative
partisan attitudes. They also suggest that stereotyping is not merely a province of right-
wing Brazilians. Instead, both sides stereotype themselves as well as their rivals.
Table 6. Stereotyping Is Associated with Desire for Greater Social Distance from the
Out-Group
Rel. to PT Rel. to antiPT Rel. to out-group
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
APBPT 0.002 0.002
(0.004) (0.003)
APBantiPT 0.010*** 0.009***
(0.003) (0.002)
APBoutgroup 0.004* 0.006*
(0.002) (0.002)
Extreme partisan 0.413*** 0.091 0.323***
(0.121) (0.130) (0.094)
Antipetista 0.146
(0.082)
High interest 0.111 0.148 0.138
(0.091) (0.114) (0.071)
N 1,248 1,248 1,001 1,001 2,249 2,249
*** p<0.001; ** p<0.01; * p<0.05; p<0.1
20 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY
https://doi.org/10.1017/lap.2023.38 Published online by Cambridge University Press
It is true that petistas tend to stereotype themselves somewhat more than they
stereotype antipetistas, while antipetistas stereotype themselves and petistas equally.
Petistas may stereotype themselves more than antipetistas because over the years the
PT has strategically sought to construct its own brand, seeking to build mass support
among voters (Samuels 1999). This may have shaped petistas’self-perceptions more
than it shaped their perceptions of out-groups. And after all, no rival partisan out-
group exists for petistas to compare themselves against directly. Meanwhile, for
antipetistas, although no party organization has shaped their attitudes, negative media
coverage about the PT (which petistas tend to discount) may weigh more heavily,
contributing to stereotyping of the out-group. It remains unclear how and why so
many voters stereotype antipetistas to such an extent, even controlling for interest in
politics. Future research should explore the sources of such stereotypes.
In any case, our results tend to support both the affective notion of partisanship—
that is, that partisanship reflects sympathy with or antipathy for different social groups
(e.g., race, class, gender)—as well as the cognitive/instrumental approach to
partisanship—that is, that polarization is mainly about policy differences (Huddy and
Bankert 2017). In the affective approach, polarization is a function of positive and/or
negative partisan affect itself, rooted in social group affinities and antipathies.
However, we found that stereotyping can account for only part of perceived political
and social divides between antipetistas and petistas. In Brazil, even nonpartisans
perceive a fairly wide policy gap between supporters of each side. And even without
taking stereotyping into consideration, partisan attitudes themselves explain most of
the remaining perceived policy gap and desire for social distance from the “out-group.”
It is impossible to fully disentangle the affective and cognitive dimensions of
polarization. Our findings suggest that stereotyping heightens existing polarization
due to policy or ideological differences. On what issues do petistas and antipetistas
diverge? Our results suggest that polarization is stronger on cultural issues and issues
related to crime and security (figure 3) than on economic issues or the environment.
The issues that more profoundly divide voters in Brazil (as elsewhere in contemporary
Latin America) do not easily map onto a traditional left–right axis. There is more to the
story of polarization than just stereotyping, and the challenge is to figure out how the
affective, ideological, and programmatic aspects of polarization interact, reinforce, or
even exaggerate each other. We leave the question of the relative contributions of
ideology, policy, and other factors to future research.
This paper is part of a larger research program exploring why partisans misperceive
the group composition of each side’s support base, and how attitudes about those groups
contribute to perceptions of policy extremism. Just as Ahler and Sood (2018b) do for the
United States, we suspect that stereotypes and perceived policy differences are
connected. That is, stereotypes about party composition shape voters’beliefs about each
side’s policy priorities. For example, antipetistas who misperceive the proportion of
petistas who are nonwhite or women may also believe that “identitarian”issues are far
more important to the PT’s agenda than petistas themselves believe. Similarly, petistas
who overestimate the proportion ofantipetistaswho are wealthy may conclude that their
opponents are motivated by economic concerns relatively more than petistas who
SAMUELS ET AL.: PARTISAN STEREOTYPING AND POLARIZATION IN BRAZIL 21
https://doi.org/10.1017/lap.2023.38 Published online by Cambridge University Press
overestimate the proportion of antipetistas who are evangelical Christians. In general,
people who overestimate the size of party-stereotypical groups will tend to believe that
those groups hold disproportionate power, fueling the perception that each side is both
intransigent and captive to narrow interests.
A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank Ken Roberts and participants at the 2023 APSA meeting in Los Angeles for
comments on an earlier version of this paper. UMN IRB approval for study 00015208
granted February 14, 2022.
S
UPPLEMENTARY
M
ATERIAL
To view supplementary material for this article, please visit https://doi.org/10.1017/
lap.2023.38. Replication materials are available in Harvard Dataverse at https://doi.
org/10.7910/DVN/CRANGT.
N
OTES
1. In English, see www.economist.com/the-americas/2022/01/08/video-games-involving-
politicians-have-gone-viral-in-brazil. For a more detailed description of the game in Portuguese,
see https://capricho.abril.com.br/comportamento/bolsonaro-mata-gays-negros-e-feministas-
em-jogo-chamado-bolsomito-2k18.
2. During the run-up to the 2018 election, some antipetistas claimed to identify with the
Social Liberal Party (PSL), which Bolsonaro had joined. However, he left that party a few
months after the election. In 2022 some antipetistas claimed an attachment to the Liberal Party
(PL), which Bolsonaro joined in order to run for reelection. We consider both PSL and PL
“partisanship”as epiphenomenal and theoretically irrelevant.
3. About half of Brazil’s voters express neither positive nor negative partisan attitudes, and
most of these voters are relatively politically disengaged and uninformed (Samuels and Zucco
2018). We consider such voters to be “nonpartisans.”It is important to note that in his
presidential campaigns, Bolsonaro received about the same number of votes from
“nonpartisans”—people who have no opinion about the PT (or any other party)—as he did
from people who profess a specific dislike of the PT. Likewise, in his own six presidential
campaigns, the PT’s historic leader Lula has always received many more votes, in absolute terms,
from “nonpartisans”than from petistas.
4. On the roots of a potential emerging racial cleavage, see Porto (2023) or Bernardino-
Costa (2023).
5. For details on our sample and our questionnaire, see the appendix.
6. Our survey included a few filler categories, but we focus analysis only on those we
considered ex ante potentially stereotypical. All analysis that follows includes sampling weights;
please see the appendix for more information.
7. Ahler and Sood (2018b) divide the absolute differences in perceptions by the true value.
We did not do this, to avoid having the indicator be driven by strong variation in true values,
which range from 5 to 65 across our stereotypical categories. Consider the following example:
For one social category, the true prevalence in the population is 5 percent, while respondents
22 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY
https://doi.org/10.1017/lap.2023.38 Published online by Cambridge University Press
believe it to be 25 percent. For another social category, the true proportion in the population is
65 percent, while people believe it to be 85 percent. In Ahler and Sood’s formulation, the
perceptual bias in the first would be 25/5, and in the second 85/65—a much larger bias for the
first case. In our formulation, both categories are overestimated by 20 points.
8. Although many believe that petistas and antipetistas differ on questions of reducing
inequality (Lacerda 2019), Samuels and Zucco (2018, 40) found that petistas and antipetistas also
did not differ on general questions about reducing inequality. Only when such policies are
explicitly connected to the PT dovoters polarize. Additional research is necessary to fully reveal the
extent to which different policies divide petistas from antipetistas in the absence of partisan cueing.
9. To operationalize PPG we use absolute values. However, in figure 3, to illustrate
perceived and actual differences we use both negative and positive values.
10. The overall mean for this variable for petistas and antipetistas across all issues and all
respondents was 35 (st. dev. 30) and 53 (st. dev. 32). This means that, on average,
respondents think that more than half of antipetistas hold conservative positions on all issues,
but only about one-third of petistas do so. The average value of the perception of conservatism
on each of the 10 issues ranged from 25 (racial justice) to 45 (church tax exemptions) for petistas
while for antipetistas it ranged from 37 (gas prices) to 72 (facilitate guns).
11. Nonpartisans are excluded from the current analysis. The Cronbach’s alpha for the
resulting four-item social distance scale was 0.73 toward petistas and 0.78 toward antipetistas.
12. We include partisan intensity here because in contrast to previous models where
nonpartisans provided a baseline, everyone in these models is a partisan.
R
EFERENCES
Abramowitz, Alan I., and Kyle L. Saunders. 2006. Exploring the Bases of Partisanship in the
American Electorate: Social Identity vs. Ideology. Political Research Quarterly 59, 2: 175–
87. DOI: 10.1177/106591290605900201.
Ahler, Douglas J., and Gaurav Sood. 2018a. Measuring Perceptions of Shares of Groups. In
Misinformation and Mass Audiences, eds. Brian G. Southwell, Emily A. Thorson, and Laura
Sheble. New York: University of Texas Press. 71–90. DOI: 10.7560/314555-006.
——. 2018b. The Parties in Our Heads: Misperceptions about Party Composition and Their
Consequences. The Journal of Politics 80, 3: 964–81. DOI: 10.1086/697253.
——. 2022. Typecast: A Routine Mental Shortcut Causes Party Stereotyping. Political Behavior
45: 1581–1607. DOI: 10.1007/s11109-022-09780-8.
Amaral, Oswaldo E. do. 2020. The Victory of Jair Bolsonaro According to the Brazilian
Electoral Study of 2018. Brazilian Political Science Review 14, 1. DOI: 10.1590/1981-
3821202000010004.
Araújo, Victor. 2022. Pentecostalismo e antipetismo nas eleições presidenciais brasileiras. Latin
American Research Review 57, 3: 517–35. DOI: 10.1017/lar.2022.29.
Baker, Andy, Barry Ames, and Lucio R. Renno. 2006. Social Context and Campaign Volatility
in New Democracies: Networks and Neighborhoods in Brazil’s 2002 Elections. American
Journal of Political Science 50, 2: 382–99. DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-5907.2006.00190.x.
Berelson, Bernard R., Paul F. Lazarsfeld, and William N. McPhee. 1954. Voting: A Study of
Opinion Formation in a Presidential Campaign. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bernardino-Costa, Joaze. 2023. Opening Pandora’s Box: The Extreme Right and the
Resurgence of Racism in Brazil. Latin American Perspectives 50, 1: 98–114. DOI: 10.1177/
0094582X221147596.
SAMUELS ET AL.: PARTISAN STEREOTYPING AND POLARIZATION IN BRAZIL 23
https://doi.org/10.1017/lap.2023.38 Published online by Cambridge University Press
Converse, Philip E. 1964. The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Politics. In Ideology and
Discontent, ed. David Apter. New York: Free Press. 206–61.
Davis, Stuart, and Joe Straubhaar. 2020. Producing Antipetismo: Media Activism and the Rise
of the Radical, Nationalist Right in Contemporary Brazil. International Communication
Gazette 82, 1: 82–100. DOI: 10.1177/1748048519880731.
Evangelista, Rafael, and Fernanda Bruno. 2019. WhatsApp and Political Instability in Brazil:
Targeted Messages and Political Radicalisation. Internet Policy Review 8, 4: 1–23.
DOI: 10.14763/2019.4.1434.
Green, Donald, Bradley Palmquist, and Eric Schickler. 2002. Partisan Hearts and Minds:
Political Parties and the Social Identities of Voters. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
DOI: 10.12987/9780300132007.
Huddy, Leonie, and Alexa Bankert. 2017. Political Partisanship as a Social Identity. In The
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics, eds. William R. Thomspon, J´ohanna K. Birnir,
Erik Martinez Kuhonta, Verlan Lewis, and Regina Smyth. New York: Oxford University
Press. DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.250.
Hunter, Wendy, and Timothy J. Power. 2023. Lula’s Second Act. Journal of Democracy 34, 1:
126–40. DOI: 10.1353/jod.2023.0008.
Kahneman, Daniel, and Amos Tversky. 1972. Subjective Probability: A Judgment of
Representativeness. Cognitive Psychology 3, 3: 430–54. DOI: 10.1016/0010-0285(72)
90016-3.
Kuo, Alexander, Neil Malhotra, and Cecilia Hyunjung Mo. 2017. Social Exclusion and Political
Identity: The Case of Asian American Partisanship. The Journal of Politics 79, 1: 17–32.
DOI: 10.1086/687570.
Lacerda, Marina Basso. 2019. O novo conservadorismo brasileiro: de Reagan a Bolsonaro. Porto
Alegre: Editora Zouk.
Layton, Matthew L., Amy Erica Smith, Mason W. Moseley, and Mollie J. Cohen. 2021.
Demographic Polarization and the Rise of the Far Right: Brazil’s 2018 Presidential
Election. Research & Politics 8, 1. DOI: 10.1177/2053168021990204.
Levendusky, Matthew S., and Neil Malhotra. 2015. (Mis)Perceptions of Partisan Polarization in
the American Public. Public Opinion Quarterly 80, S1: 378–91. DOI: 10.1093/poq/
nfv045.
Lynch, Christian, and Paulo Henrique Cassimiro. 2022. O populismo reacionário: ascensão e
legado do bolsonarismo. São Paulo: Editora Contracorrente.
Mutz, Diana C. 1998. Impersonal Influence: How Perceptions of Mass Collectives Affect Political
Attitudes. Cambridge Studies in Political Psychology and Public Opinion. New York:
Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/cbo9781139175074.
Nicolau, Jairo. 2020. O Brasil dobrou à direita: uma radiografia da eleição de Bolsonaro em 2018.
São Paulo: Editora Schwarcz-Companhia das Letras.
Pinheiro-Machado, Rosana, and Adriano de Freixo, eds. 2019. Brasil em transe: bolsonarismo,
nova direita e desdemocratização. Rio de Janeiro: Oficina Raquel.
Porto, Mauro Pereira. 2023. Mirrors of Whiteness: Media, Middle-Class Resentment, and the Rise
of the Far Right in Brazil. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. DOI: 10.2307/jj.
8500737.
Prado, Michele. 2021. Tempestade ideol´ogica: Bolsonarismo: a alt-right e o populismo iliberal no
Brasil. São Paulo: Editora Lux.
Renn´o, Lucio. 2022. Bolsonarismo e as eleições de 2022. Estudos Avançados 36: 147–63.
DOI: 10.1590/s0103-4014.2022.36106.009.
24 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY
https://doi.org/10.1017/lap.2023.38 Published online by Cambridge University Press
Rozin, Paul, and Edward B. Royzman. 2001. Negativity Bias, Negativity Dominance, and
Contagion. Personality and Social Psychology Review 5, 4: 296–320. DOI: 10.1207/
s15327957pspr0504_2.
Samuels, David J. 1999. Incentives to Cultivate a Party Vote in Candidate-Centric Electoral
Systems: Evidence from Brazil. Comparative Political Studies 32, 4: 487–518. DOI: 10.
1177/0010414099032004004.
Samuels, David J., and Cesar Zucco. 2018. Partisans, Antipartisans, and Nonpartisans: Voting
Behavior in Brazil. New York: Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/
9781108553742.
Smith, Amy Erica. 2019. Religion and Brazilian Democracy: Mobilizing the People of God.New
York: Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/9781108699655.
SAMUELS ET AL.: PARTISAN STEREOTYPING AND POLARIZATION IN BRAZIL 25
https://doi.org/10.1017/lap.2023.38 Published online by Cambridge University Press
