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Who Votes for Chavismo?: Class Voting in Hugo Chávez's Venezuela

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2022

Noam Lupu
Noam Lupu*
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Abstract

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The conventional wisdom about contemporary Venezuelan politics is that class voting has become commonplace, with the poor doggedly supporting Hugo Chávez while the rich oppose him. This class voting is considered both a new feature of Venezuelan politics and a puzzle given the multiclass bases of prior populist leaders in Latin America. I clarify the concept of class voting by distinguishing between monotonic and nonmonotonic associations between class and vote choice. Using survey data, I find that only in Chávez's first election in 1998 was class voting monotonic. Since then, class voting in Venezuela has been nonmonotonic, with the very wealthiest Venezuelans disproportionately voting against Chávez. At the same time, Chávez's support appears to have increased most among the middle sectors of the income distribution, not the poorest. Finally, I find that whatever effect Chávez may have had on overall turnout, his efforts have not disproportionately mobilized poor voters.

Resumen

Resumen

El consenso de opinión sobre la política contemporánea venezolana es que el voto de clase se ha instalado, con los pobres apoyando sostenidamente a Hugo Chávez mientras los ricos se oponen. Éste voto de clase es visto a su vez como una nueva característica de la política venezolana y una paradoja ya que los líderes populistas anteriores en Latinoamérica tuvieron bases policlasistas. En éste trabajo aclaro el concepto del voto de clase, distinguiendo entre asociaciones monotónicas y no-monotónicas entre clase y voto. Usando datos de encuestas, encuentro que el voto de clase fue monotónico únicamente en la primera elección de Chávez en 1998. Desde entonces, el voto de clase en Venezuela ha sido no-monotónico, con los venezolanos desproporcionadamente más ricos votando en contra de Chávez. A su vez, el apoyo de Chávez parece haberse incrementado más entre las clases medias que entre los pobres. Finalmente, encuentro que cualquiera que sea el efecto que Chávez haya tenido sobre la asistencia a votar (turnout) en general, sus esfuerzos no parecen haber movilizado a los desproporcionadamente pobres.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , 2010 , pp. 7 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © 2010 by the Latin American Studies Association

Footnotes

I am grateful to Nick Carnes, Thad Dunning, Marty Gilens, Kanta Murali, Sue Stokes, Deborah Yashar, and the anonymous LARR reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. I also thank José Molina, Friedrich Welsch and the Population Database at the Universidad Simon Bolívar, and the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) for generously sharing their data. The William Ebenstein Student Research Fund, Program in Latin American Studies, Princeton University, funded field research for this study. Unreported results are available on the author's website.

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