Skeletons Under the Altar: Authoritarian Stereotypes and Voting for Evangelicals in Latin America∗

Evangelical Christians are a rapidly growing share of the population in most Latin American countries, yet there is substantial cross-national variation in this religious minority’s involvement and success with electoral politics. This paper examines one possible explanation for the electoral success or failure of evangelical politicians—the effect on voting behavior of their ties to former dictators. In the context of online survey experiments conducted prior to general elections in Chile (2013) and Brazil (2014), the treatment primes evangelicals’ historical support for military regimes during the 1970s–1980s. I then examine the effect of this association on vote intention for an evangelical candidate for Congress. In Chile, where the democratic-authoritarian cleavage is salient in present-day politics and evangelicals’ authoritarian ties were fairly prominent, the treatment increases vote intention among non-evangelical, rightwing respondents. I find null effects in Brazil, where the democratic-authoritarian cleavage is largely irrelevant to present-day politics and where evangelicals’ historical support for the military regime was less visible. The paper concludes with a discussion of plans to conduct a similar survey experiment during upcoming general elections in Peru, a case that presents strong expectations of effects on voting behavior. ∗Prepared for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, April 16–19, 2015. The surveys analyzed in this paper were conducted jointly with Amy Erica Smith and approved by the Institutional Review Boards of Boston University and Iowa State University.