Densidade da filiação partidária e expansão territorial dos partidos políticos brasileiros (2012-2022)

Abstract

The object of this thesis is the density of party membership in Brazil, that is, the percentage of voters affiliated with political parties in the country between 2012 and 2022. The main objective is to examine the relationship between the variation in party membership density and the territorial expansion of Brazilian parties during this period, measured by the creation of local party units. The central hypothesis is that the establishment of party directories and provisional commissions in municipalities has a positive impact on the density of local party membership. In Brazil, despite the availability of detailed data on party membership, few studies have explored this topic, and even fewer have linked this phenomenon to the territorial expansion of political parties. Based on the organizational theory of political parties, this thesis aims not only to fill this gap in the specialized literature but also to broaden the understanding of political parties as organizations, their performance in the local electoral market, and their consequent contribution to the improvement of Brazil’s democratic system. Therefore, 22 political parties that were registered with the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) in 2009 were selected, due to the availability and reliability of data on these party organizations on the TSE’s official website. Parties that were created, dissolved, incorporated, or merged with other parties between 2009 and 2022 were excluded. The data regarding the number of party members and the total electorate of each municipality were grouped using the R programming language and organized into specific Excel spreadsheets for each of the selected parties, enabling the calculation of local membership density. These were then combined with data on the number of party units created in each municipality throughout the period. Finally, these data were transferred to SPSS, where we conducted linear regression tests.