Making voters and making election campaign: parties and candidates in the electional competition on the Brazilian Third Republic (1946-1964)

• Grant number: 19/03950-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: May 01, 2019
• End date: December 31, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Political Science - State and Government
• Principal Investigator: Fernando de Magalhães Papaterra Limongi
• Grantee: Rodney da Silva Amador
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 16/14525-6 - Political institutions, patterns of executive-legislative relations and government capacity, AP.TEM

Abstract

The 1945 elections marked the emergence of an effectively democratic period in the country, with party competition and regular elections. However, there was no guarantee that the situation prior to 1945, that is, government control of elections, could not be restored. One point little explored in the literature is the cooperation agreement signed between PSD and UDN to support the Dutra government, as well as to direct its succession, and in only a few states this agreement did not take place in the following elections in 1947. One of these states was São Paulo, the only one to elect a governor of a different party, much smaller in number and national expression: the PSP of Adhemar de Barros. The purpose of this research is to analyze the emergence of electoral competition using the 1947 São Paulo elections as a case study. The central hypothesis, derived from French (1987) and Simão (1956), is that the 1947 elections were decided by the fact that Adhemar de Barros's party mobilized a group of non-privileged voters by the major parties, that is, while UDN and PSD sought their vows in the interiors of the state, using techniques from the Old Republic, the PSP - and, to a lesser extent, the PTN, a party for which Hugo Borghi competed - focused on the capital and more populous areas and with large presence of urban workers -on factories and transport.