Colonial Origins of Voting Preferences: Evidence from Brazil

Ali Reza Rahimi, Free University of Berlin

This paper examines how Brazil’s colonial and slavery legacies continue to shape contemporary political preferences, with a focus on electoral support for the Workers’ Party presidential candidates. As the largest importer of enslaved Africans and the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery, Brazil developed enduring regional and racial hierarchies embedded in its institutional and political structures. Using a municipality-level dataset that combines historical slave population data from the 1872 census, contemporary Quilombola community records, and presidential election results from 2002–2022, I analyze the long-term impact of slavery intensity, Afro-descendant resistance, and colonial boundaries on voting preferences. To identify causal effects, I employ instrumental variable approaches and spatial regression discontinuity design around the Tordesillas Line and the Dutch Brazil border. The results show that municipalities with higher historical concentrations of enslaved populations display lower support for the Workers’ Party, consistent with elite persistence and conservative dominance. In contrast, areas with larger Quilombola populations exhibit greater support for this party, reflecting traditions of resistance and marginalization. Furthermore, sharp political divides across colonial boundaries indicate that institutional legacies from Portuguese and Dutch colonial regimes still influence Brazil’s political preferences.

See paper

 Presented in Session 126. Democratic Vulnerability, Diaspora Mobilization, and Advocacy Networks