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The rise of the Latin American left after the mid-1990s and the sense that more recent elections are generating victories for conservative candidates has led many to ask the following question: How far to the left or right are Latin American electorates in their vote choices? We answer that question on this website. We studied the ideology of vote choices as well as the causes of these choices through 2008 in our published article, which you can read here. On this website, we present and will continually update our new measure (called "Vote Revealed Leftism" in the article) of Latin America's ideological tendency as expressed through its vote choices. In the figure below, the blue labels plot the ideological leaning of electorates in each presidential election since 1993 in 18 countries. These ideological leanings are based on a simple formula that uses parties' ideologies and vote shares. (See the article for the math.) Notice, for example, how the leftward placement of the blue "Ven##" labels since 1998 capture Venezuelans' taste for Mr. Chávez. The central tendency through all of these blue points is represented by the red line. In other words, this red line is our estimate of how far left/right Latin American electorates have been in each year.
The figure does show evidence of the so-called "pink tide" or "left wave"--the red line has shifted leftward since 1993. But this finding comes with a number of surprising qualifications. Most importantly, the shift has not been very dramatic. Latin Americans did not move even one whole notch on the five-point "Right--Center Right--Center--Center Left--Left" ideological scale. In fact, they didn't even move half a notch. Instead, they moved from half way between Center and Center-Right in 1993 to just a smidge right (not left) of dead center by 2008. In other words, there are still A LOT of rightists (see more on this below), and Latin Americans on average are very much centrists, even after the left wave. A related surprise is that voters trended leftward between 1993 and 1999, stayed level a few years, and then continued leftward after 2005. In other words, the left wave did NOT begin right after 1998 as is often presumed. It's probably too early to make much of post-2008 rightward downtick, but stay tuned!
If you would like technical details on how we calculated and constructed all of this, please see our article and its on-line appendix. You can also download the dataset here.
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What percentage of the vote did each of the five ideological camps receive in Latin American presidential elections? This figure answers that question and points out a trend that no one is talking about. Yes, the Left and Center Left have been on the rise, BUT SO HAS THE RIGHT. Latin American voters are increasingly voting for less centrist options, although they are, on average, centrists. In other words, we're seeing increased polarization.
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What has gone on at the legislative level? Not much, at least by way of ideological trends. The left wave we've seen at the presidential level hasn't really occurred at the legislative level. It seems there was a slight tick leftward in the mid-1990s (one that no one seemed to notice or talk about) but not much has happened since then. In other words, the left wave, such as it is, is almost strictly a presidential elections phenomenon.
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