University Honors

This paper examines whether evangelical voters in Brazil have become increasingly politically cohesive over time and what factors may explain this transformation. Using survey data from LAPOPís AmericasBarometer from 2006 to 2023, I examine patterns of voter choice, ideological self-placement, and religiosity among evangelicals relative to other groups across six presidential elections in Brazil. The findings show that while evangelical voting patterns between 2002 and 2014 were not markedly different from other groups, the elections of 2018 and 2022 reveal a more cohesive and right-leaning evangelical voting bloc alignment. Evangelical identification becomes a strong and statistically significant predictor of both support for conservative candidates on the ballot and right-wing ideological self-placement. Additional analysis on church attendance shows that the shift cannot be explained by increased religiosity, as evangelicals have consistently attended religious services at a higher frequency than other religious groups, but not increasingly so over time. Drawing on existing literature, the paper argues that this transformation is better explained by changes in how evangelicalism is organized and communicated politically. Coordinated church networks, moralized political messaging, and the increasing role of digital platforms such as WhatsApp have increased the frequency of exposure to politically salient content and facilitated the dispersion of targeted political narratives especially pertinent to evangelical communities and aligned with the political right. Taken together, the findings suggest that evangelical political cohesion in Brazil is the product of the interaction between institutional organization, strategic messaging, and modern communication technologies.