Porque dinheiro importa: a dinâmica das contribuições eleitorais para o Congresso Nacional em 2002 e 2006

Many scholars have written on money and elections, especially on how expenditures can explain the performance of the candidate. Our paper aims at describing some features of finance campaign for the Brazilian National Congress in 2002 and 2006, based on the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) data. We tried to capture: a) donations and expenditures variation of incumbents and challengers; b) regional variations, given the socioeconomic cleavages of the electoral district, that may affect donations and expenditures; c) cameral variations, given the incongruent character of the Brazilian bicameralism; d) party variations, that is, if there are candidates that cost "more" or "less", depending on party affiliation.