Punishment vote: democratic patience is running out

Brazilian citizens queue to vote in the last elections in a polling station in São Paulo. Lela Beltrão

Late last year, an article in

magazine predicted that, following the victories of Gustavo Petro and Gabriel Boric, there would be a “turn to the right” in Latin America.

The prediction was based on the theory of the democratic pendulum and electoral cycles, which refers precisely to this oscillating movement of electoral behavior: from right to left, from left to right.

Invariably.

But, is this the case, or should we rather think about the officialism versus opposition axis rather than the ideological axis?

The reality is different.

The possibility of political alternations is more certain and predictable than the possibility of alternatives.

In other words: waiting your turn, with a radical opposition, would be enough.

In this context, the stimuli to build alternative proposals diminish in the face of the spoils of permanent opposition.

It is more useful for party politics to oppose than to control, build an alternative and eventually agree and reach great agreements.

Simply being an opponent has more reward than being an alternative.

This does not mean that societies are continually changing their thought matrix and their beliefs.

In fact, there is data from the AmericasBarometer that shows that the ideological self-identification of Latin Americans has not changed in the last decade.

The pendulum behavior has another explanation: the triumph of the opponents.

As Andrés Malamud well warned, in ten of the last eleven Latin American presidential elections the opposition won.

We should stop painting electoral maps red or blue to paint them black and white.

For many years it was believed that being an official party implied a very clear electoral advantage.

And yes it was.

The structure of the State, the control of the agenda and the capacity to execute assistance policies were some of the many strengths that being a government had.

So much so that an article by political scientists Michael Penfold, Javier Corrales, and Gonzalo Hernández demonstrated a very high success rate for incumbent presidents, whom they called "the invincibles."

In fact, until very recently, there were only two Latin American presidents who, having the institutional possibility, had not managed to be re-elected: the Nicaraguan Daniel Ortega in 1990 and the Dominican Hipólito Mejía in 2004. However, in recent years, this group doubled with Mauricio Macri (2019) and Jair Bolsonaro (2022).

Being a government is no longer what it used to be.

Electoral cycles are shortened for the ruling parties.

And the partisan instinct intuits that showing forceful - and furious - opposition is the fastest path to alternation.

Goodbye alternatives.

Various studies reveal a very high level of political dissatisfaction, both with the democratic system and with the government in office, whatever its color.

According to the Latinobarómentro, 70% of Latin Americans are dissatisfied with democracy and 73% believe that it is governed only for the benefit of a few.

In this context, the "punishment vote" grows, a vote that judges and condemns the management that ends.

Voting serves to channel anger.

And the opponents take advantage of this effervescent and emotionally intense climate to channel this irritation.

In this way, more and more, elections become plebiscites, campaigns into collective exercises of

and votes on posts that are generally critical.

The risk is that these assessments monopolize the debate and that proposals for the future, which once generated hope, are relegated to the background.

Opponents have to face the attractive -and profitable- temptation to carry out a denunciation campaign that feeds dissatisfaction and social weariness.

A strategy that, although effective in the short term, can later become a liability, if they end up being elected, and generate an uncomfortable tension between the expectations created and the limits of reality that have to be managed.

When the vote serves to punish, the next to receive the democratic wrath is the one who encouraged, encouraged and benefited from the outrage.

Democratic patience is getting shorter and shorter.

If the vote only destroys, there can never be alternative projects.

Opponents only.

Projects in which No is the only proposal.

We are not experiencing a new “pink tide”.

Nor is there a wave coming from the right.

Rather, there is a critical and demanding society that, faced with a new election, reacts to the efforts and turns its vote into a sentence.

Better to condemn than to evaluate.

Attention.

Antoni Gutiérrez-Rubí

@antonigr communication advisor. 

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