Original studies in the United States conceptualize personal vote as the share of electoral support resulting from the constituency work performed by incumbents and their staff (Cain, Ferejohn and Fiorina, 1987; Mayhew, 1974; Fenno, 1978). More recent works, however, define and operationalize personal voting as the importance of biographic and phenotypic charac- teristics in voting decisions (Carey and Shugart, 1995; Shugart, Valdini and Suominen, 2005; Canache, Mondak and Cabrera, 2000). By encompassing diverse political phenomena, unclear definitions render the risk of conceptual stretching (Sartori, 1970).

The present study examines the concept of personal vote, with a particular focus on the varying definitions and their empirical implications for the study of the electoral connection between constituents and representatives. To this end, we first identify differences in how three seminal pieces conceptualize personal vote. Second, we review other usages of the concept in the literature, and argue that scholars can reduce conceptual ambiguity by clarifying the amplitude and applicability of their working definition of personal vote. Third, we focus on the operationalization of the concept to show how varying measures lead to contrasting conclusions about the prominence of “personal voting” in Brazil- a paradigmatic case of personalism in the literature- and in comparison to other countries with similar electoral systems and to other countries in Latin America.

Specifically, we use data from the CSES and the AmericasBarometer to show that Brazilians have comparatively low levels of candidate recall and direct contact with representatives. We also show that, in contrast to the results from (Shugart et al. 2005), the vote earning-attribute of being native to the district is not associated with electoral success in Brazil, especially in larger districts. We conclude with a discussion about the importance of conceptual clarity to improve our assessment of the role personalism plays in open-list systems.

Autor: George Avelino, Guilherme A. Russo, Maurício Yoshida Izumi