Poverty and vote buying: Survey-based evidence from Africa

•Vote buying is widespread during election campaigns in new democracies.•This paper studies how poverty affects vote buying in new democracies in Africa.•The paper tests the effect of poverty on vote buying using multilevel regressions and data from the Afrobarometer.•Results show that political parties' vote buying campaigns disproportionately target poor people.•The effect of poverty increases when elections are highly competitive.

Alongside the spread of democracy in the developing world, vote buying has emerged as an integral part of election campaigns. Yet, we know little about the causes of vote buying in young democracies. In this paper, we analyse the sources of vote buying in sub-Saharan African. Using data from the Afrobarometer, we focus on the impact of poverty on vote buying at the individual- and country-level. Results from multilevel regressions show that poor voters are significantly more likely to be targets of vote buying than wealthier voters. This effect increases when elections are highly competitive. Thus, micro-level poverty seems to be an important source of vote buying in Africa and has major implications for the way electoral democracy operates.