Um modelo de decisão multicritério para preferências eleitorais

Abstract

In this article, amulticriteria model for the assessment of electoral preferences is built. The multi-criteria methodologyused is probabilistic composition of preferences,extended to consider possible interactions. The mainobjective of the articleis to demonstrate the viability, the social interest, as well as theattractiveness for the political parties, of thenew approach to electoral preferences assessment.The main hypothesis underlying the model is that the population as a whole evaluates each party by consideringits position with respect to a set ofissues. An analysis is developed of the case of parties’ positionsand voters’ preferences set on the basis of government spending distribution. A principle of preference concentration is applied to explaincriteria importance. The influence of group interests, though not assumed to be determinant, is not denied. An expected use of the model is for parties to evaluate alliance strategies, since the probabilistic modeling of the preferences and of the direct treatment of the possible interactions among criteria opens a new perspective for the analysis of electoral allegiances. A theoretical example is analyzed. An application involving real preferences in a Brazilian election is discussed.This example and this application demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach.