Who Do Voters Blame in Times of Crisis? Electoral Accountability in Brazil's Federalism During COVID-19

This study explores electoral accountability in federative systems during crises, with a focus on the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil. It analyses how voters assign blame across government levels in contexts of fragmented responsibilities. Employing a mixed-methods approach, the research integrates a difference-in-differences design to examine the impact of COVID-19 mortality on electoral outcomes and multinomial logistic regression on survey data to assess voters’ perceptions. The findings indicate that voters penalised the president in municipalities with higher COVID-19 mortality rates, while governors were shielded. Survey results underscore the importance of information, showing that voters who were more informed about federal actions attributed greater blame to the president. These results demonstrate that voters rely on available information to navigate the complexities of multilevel governance, focusing accountability on actors with higher visibility and perceived authority, thereby emphasising the pivotal role of federal executives in times of crisis.