Persuading judges or voters? The role of lawsuits in elections

Abstract

What role do lawsuits play in elections? We document that 30 percent of Brazilian mayoral candidates are involved in election-related lawsuits and that they spend 11 percent of their campaign funds on lawyers. Candidates filing lawsuits rarely succeed in disqualifying opponents or annulling elections. Instead, the true motivation might be to influence voters: Most lawsuits are filed right before the election, and candidates feature the lawsuits in their media campaigns. Motivated by these findings, we estimate the causal effect of lawsuits on polling data and can rule out large effects on voters.

Keywords: electoral courts, negative campaigning

JEL Classification: K16, K41, D72