The faith's vote: electoral behaviour and party recruitment of São Paulo's evangelical state deputies (2002-2014)

The aim of this work is to understand the relationship between religion and politics in the Brazilian subnational context. Specifically, we worked with the state evangelical deputies elected in the state of São Paulo between 2002 and 2014. We sought to answer two questions that involve two dimensions of the phenomenon. The first of these is centered on the electoral geography of voting in these candidates. We tried to answer if there were one or more contexts that would allow the formation of an evangelical vote. Our hypothesis is that contexts with lower schooling and income and greater social vulnerability would be associated with higher voting rates in these candidates. Based on spatial analyzes, mapped by municipality and administrative region in the case of the city of São Paulo, we conclude that there is an urban characteristic associated with voting, as well as a response to the center-periphery relations in which Pentecostal theology would have found fertile ground for expansion. The second dimension is the relationship between the internal selection process of official candidatures and party recruitment. Our hypothesis is that from recruitment strategies centered on partisan leaders, the pattern of patronage and the informal rules of the electoral game, parties use "evangelical machines" as shortcuts for the selection of candidates who have an electoral appeal. From a qualitative methodology, with interviews with the deputies elected by the 18th legislature, we find that the different denominations recruit their candidates in different ways. In the Assembly of God, which weighs the personal charisma of the candidate with the leadership and in the Universal Church, where strength lies in the institutional charisma. In addition, we find that party choice comes from the viewpoint of a selectorate that has control over the party list and a set of rules that makes the possibility of candidacy broad (AU)