Explicando el voto en Querétaro, México: teorías clásicas y sentimientos

Abstract

Traditionally, the Mexican vote was explained with sociological, psychological (mainly partisanship) and rational theories. However, the results of the 2018 presidential election seems to contradict all three perspectives, so it seems important to explore new explanations, among which feelings are a promising possible new determinant of political preference. It is known that Mexican citizens have electoral preference for candidates that provoke positive feelings and vice versa, however, such a phenomenon could be just a side effect of classical explanations. To verify whether sentiments have a non-spurious relationship with electoral preference, multiple regression models were made. The 2021 gubernatorial election in the state of Querétaro, Mexico, was studied, with a representative sample of 842 cases. Relations were found between sentiments and voting and, the former were not controlled by classic variables of other explanations such as partisanship, education or class. In all this, the variable of “inspiring respect” stood out; it controlled several of the other feelings and had the strongest relationship with the dependent variable. It was concluded that although feelings do not have a spurious relationship with the vote, the causal mechanism was not clear, since the preponderance of respect is not well understood.