Candidate race and electoral outcomes: evidence from Brazil

Researchers agree that racial disparities exist in Brazil's political arena, but disagree about the underlying causes. Some scholars suggest that the racial gap between the electorate and those elected in Brazil is explained by differences in candidate entry, social class, and campaign resources while others believe racial discrimination is at play. In this paper, I test these competing explanations for Afro-Brazilian underrepresentation using data from Brazil's 2014 federal deputy elections. My results indicate that candidate entry, socioeconomic status, campaign resources, and other factors only partially explain racial disparities in electoral outcomes. When I control for theoretically important non-racial candidate characteristics, there remains a strong association between candidate race and electoral outcomes. This finding suggests that racial discrimination is a major contributing factor to Afro-Brazilian political underrepresentation.