Brazil has one of the most unequal distributions of income in the world. Some observers describe Brazil as “Belindia,” where a few million citizens enjoy the living standards of Belgium and tens of millions suffer through those of India. Amid this inequality, most parties are devoid of ideology and programmatic orientations, geared instead to municipal-level pork-barrel politics and particularistic benefits (Ames 2001; Samuels 2003). Moreover, the degree of partisan identification is low, and citizens hold their elected officials in low regard (Mainwaring 1999; Samuels 2006). Because of these circumstances, one might expect bottom-up factors such as wealth rather than top-down factors such as political predispositions and elites to shape public opinion about the most crucial issues of the day.