Crowdfunding and electoral performance in Brazil: statistical analysis of the elections for federal deputy in 2018

Abstract

The article seeks to analyze the performance of crowdfunding as a fundraising strategy in the election campaign for the Brazilian Congress in the 2018 general elections. The article also analyzes the influence of the socioeconomic and demographic profiles of the candidates associated with the decision to adopt crowdfunding. The methodology used was logistic regression, considering the following independent variables: funds raised, education, age, race, and marital status of the candidate, in addition to the party’s ideology, size, and age of the party. The binary dependent variables were: use of crowdfunding (or not) and the campaign’s outcome. The data source was the Electoral Data Repository of the Brazilian Superior Electoral Court (TSE), with information from all candidates running for federal deputy in all Brazilian states in the 2018 general elections. The resulting analysis shows that crowdfunding was statistically more used by white, young, highly educated candidates from the Southern region of Brazil. There is also evidence that crowdfunding is an electoral strategy used especially by candidates from recently created parties, from the left, center-left or right (those in the center and center-right did not use crowdfunding as frequently) and larger parties. Finally, the econometric model points to an average increase of 5.55 percentage points in the probability of electoral success of candidates using crowdfunding.

Keywords:
legislative elections; electoral funding; electoral campaigning; crowdfunding; Brazil