Doble ronda electoral y apoyo al presidente. El caso de Perú

Abstract

The paper looks to establish the impact of runoff voting systems for electing presidents on the president's legitimacy, studying the second presidency of Alan García in Peru. At first sight, this case seems to be at odds with the perspective that associates runoff voting with legitimacy. The analysis focuses on the evaluation made by citizens to whom the candidate Alan García was not the first preference, but nevertheless voted for him in the second round. Our findings suggest that judgments made by this group of citizens are not different from those made by those who had García as their first preference. If the two-round system didn't matter, this group would behave like those who preferred Ollanta Humala to Alan García. Results are robust to inclusion of preferences over policies and cleavages as controls. They are consistent with theoretical expectations that come from asserting a sense of identification by citizens towards the candidate they vote for.

Keywords

• Majority runoff
• presidential elections
• performance evaluation
• Peru.