Context and Competition in Sao Paulo Politics

This article analyzes the changes in local politics and in political parties' electoral bases in Sao Paulo since 1985. The study refocuses on the premises of the contextual approach and electoral geography to show that Sao Paulo politics displays specific territories, and that both socioeconomic structural factors and the dynamics of relations between the center and the periphery act to shape electoral preferences. As for competition in the State, the study shows that since 1994, politics in Sao Paulo has been oriented by the dynamics of Brazilian national politics, grounded in the bipartisan dispute between the Workers' Party (PT) and the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB). Finally, concerning the organization of the main political parties' electoral bases, the study indicates that the parties that were already organized at the beginning of the period, namely PT, PSDB, PMDB, PDS/PP, PTB, and PFL/DEM, have bases that are reasonably well rooted among the voter constituency and that they organize choices according to a dynamic that resists Sao Paulo's fragmented partisan scenario.55111917