Latinobarómetro 2011: Middle Class Angst

The Latinobarómetro poll is out. The 2011 survey included 20,204 face-to-face interviews in 18 Latin American countries. Conducted annually since 1995, the poll is widely seen as the most comprehensive study of public opinion across the region.

For most of the past decade it has been a delight to read. Support for democracy and market economies has increased, notwithstanding significant variation between the likes of halcyon Uruguay and lawless Guatemala. However, this year shows a worrying erosion of support for liberal norms. Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico notched significant drops in support for democracy since 2010, surely because of surging violent crime. Yet the same explanation doesn’t hold for the C-class: Colombia, Costa Rica and Chile also witnessed significant drops in support for democracy.

In Brazil, support for democracy declined from 54 percent to 45 percent in the past year, suggesting disappointment in President Rousseff’s first year in office, possibly because her anti-corruption campaign backfired. After Uruguay, support for democracy is strongest in Argentina, somewhat of an irony—it is the country with the most presidents in the twenty-first century.

Things are gloomiest in Honduras and Paraguay, where a quarter of respondents said an authoritarian government might be better than a democratic one. An eleven-point spike in support for authororitarianism in Ecuador is worrying, especially when it is coupled with the popularity of Rafael Correa.

Also interesting is the polled response to the prompt: “Which nation would you like that (your country) look more like? Think as a whole: your lifestyle, values, customs, economic and political situation, etc.” The United States chalked 26 percent: Spain 19 percent; Brazil 11 percent; China 8 percent; France 6 percent; and Venezuela 4 percent.

Meanwhile, support for the market economy remains strong. The cross currents give the Economist reason to think there is an opening for a new center-right in Latin America. I doubt that: Latin America’s right will continue to operate as technocrats. But the poll signs are one more hint of the death of rabid leftism that took hold during the middle part of the last decade.

If you’d like to dig in to the findings, check out Latinobarómetro.org. The English translation isn’t yet available.