Brazilian Elections Research Articles

Right to Vote and Electoral Judiciary in Brazil

Abstract This paper aims to demonstrate how the constitutional guarantees of the right to vote and the constitutional design of the Electoral Judiciary have protected electoral integrity in Brazil during the Bolsonaro administration. The 1988 Constitution entrenched voting rights, expanded suffrage, and adopted compulsory voting, creating inclusive voting practices that facilitate voter turnout. The constitutional system also provided for an independent Electoral Judiciary that operates on all levels of electoral governance, including rulemaking. As the sole electoral management body in the country, the Electoral Judiciary generated a process of positive feedback that reinforced its authority. This process has also been guaranteed by the institutional linkage of the Superior Electoral Court with the Federal Supreme Court, where the latter acts as a self-referencing veto point, upholding the decisions of the Electoral Judiciary. Keywords: voting rights, electoral management, electoral justice, Brazilian election law.

Gênero e raça como marcadores sociais de desigualdades na representação política: um estudo sobre a participação de mulheres e mulheres negras na política institucional no Norte de Minas Gerais e Vale do Jequitinhonha-MG

This article deals with the political representation of women in the northern mesoregions of Minas Gerais - MG and Vale do Jequitinhonha - MG, comprised of 140 municipalities. The objective is to investigate the phenomenon of inequality in political representation expressed through the gender and race/color variables. This is a quantitative work using descriptive statistics. Data collection took place on the Superior Electoral Court website—Open data portal. The data is analyzed by comparing the results of each region with data from municipal elections in Brazil. One may observe the differences between the regions and how much the scenario of underrepresentation of women in the Jequitinhonha Valley is more challenging than the context of underrepresentation of women in Brazil.

Are there populist parties in Brazil? An analysis of Election manifestos (2010-2022)

Are there populist parties in Brazil? Despite the common perception of personalistic electoral connections, the literature suggests that parties play a crucial role in legislation and voting choice. However, Brazilian parties are overlooked in populism studies. This article adds to the literature by analyzing populism in Brazilian election manifestos between 2010 and 2022. Through a man-machine content analysis application, it finds that populism is used by only a few parties, predominantly among radical left parties. The article also explores populism within mainstream parties during the 2018 elections. Despite not representing a threat to democracy due to limited influence, the existence of populist parties challenges the misconception that populism in Brazil is solely about leadership.

Misinformation Campaigns through WhatsApp and Telegram in Presidential Elections in Brazil

Misinformation Campaigns through WhatsApp and Telegram in Presidential Elections in Brazil

Mecanismos para evitar irregularidades no sistema de financiamento eleitoral brasileiro

This article presents, in a simple and objective way, the dimension of elections in Brazil and the structure of the Electoral Justice, the body responsible for administering the voter register and all acts relating to the exercise of citizenship through suffrage. The purpose of the text is to discuss the monitoring mechanisms aimed at preventing the abuse of economic power in electoral financing. Parity of arms and balance between the candidates are important premises for ensuring the democratic legitimacy of the electoral result.

Far-right memespheres and platform affordances: the effects of environmental opacity on the spread of extremist memes on Twitter and WhatsApp

ABSTRACT Research on WhatsApp political memes is still scarce. Nevertheless, since the 2018 Brazilian elections, the platform has attracted the attention of the media in general, after complaints of its use to spread misinformation and extremist messages by supporters of the Bolsonaro Government. Despite this, the effects of the WhatsApp platform on the user practices of sharing memes are still poorly understood. This article proposes a cross-platform comparative approach, between the digital memes on Twitter and those on WhatsApp, to better understand how user practices are affected by some of the structural singularities of these platforms. Based on a sample of 1,794 memes collected on both platforms, this study finds that there is a higher than expected frequency of ideological memes on WhatsApp in relation toTwitter. The findings suggest that WhatsApp’s environmental opacity favors the emergence of an extremist memesphere.

Was Bolsonaro’s 2018 electoral victory an institutional accident?

Presidential Elections are critical moments for polyarchical systems, particularly in contexts of high social tension. In this regard, the 2018 presidential election in Brazil, which used a two-round system, is a significant case study. Intriguingly, the most divisive candidates went to the second round. Was this an institutional accident? Pairwise and positional voting procedures embody different generalizations of a majoritarian credo that underpins such elections. The paper mobilizes both perspectives and, using representative survey data, reconstructs the top four preferences of the Brazilian electorate a week before the election. The analysis reveals that the electoral winner, Jair Messias Bolsonaro – despite being a divisive candidate – was a Condorcet Winner and a Borda Winner. Conversely, the second-round loser, Fernando Haddad, was a Condorcet Loser. Thus, Bolsonaro’s victory in 2018 was not an institutional accident. The paper also explores possible alternative scenarios under different feasible sets of candidates through simulations, contributing to a deeper understanding of the role of decision procedures in critical junctures.

Mind the Gap: Facebook’s measures against information disorder do not go far enough

In recent decades, a revolutionary transformation has substantially altered the way people access information. Online social media platforms have become a significant facet of our daily lives. The intersection of political discourse with the proliferation of what is commonly termed as “fake news” on these platforms has given rise to an environment that does not necessarily foster independent and critical thinking, thereby posing substantial risks to individuals, industries, and governments. While Facebook has implemented novel strategies to counteract this challenge, their efficacy remains questionable. Drawing from an analysis of fact-checking activities conducted during two Brazilian elections, this study aims to illuminate the key areas of focus within corrective information and assess its impact on Facebook. Our examination also highlights our critique of the lack of standardized measures, utilizing Meta’s tool (CrowdTangle) for this qualitative study. Ultimately, our study concludes by offering insights into potential policy alternatives that could be adopted to address this phenomenon.

Unequal Resources, Unequal Careers: The Role of Campaign Financing in the Gender Gap in Candidates’ Persistence in Brazil

Do female candidates give up running for office after losing more readily than their male counter-parts? I address this question by employing a regression discontinuity between last winners and first losers in city council elections in Brazil. The results show that losing an election diminishes the chances of running again for both genders. However, the effect is large for women. I offer an explanation for this gender gap in rerunning by developing a model based on the distribution of campaign financial resources among candidates. I argue that female candidates receive fewer financial resources from donors and their political parties than male candidates. Consequently, to run for office, women often need to use more of their own money. This leads to a faster depletion of their personal financial resources and, ultimately, a greater likelihood of them dropping out of politics. The argument is supported by evidence on campaign financing for the same period.

#FandomsPeloVoto (#FandomsfortheVote): Fan Activism for Youth Voter Engagement in the 2022 Brazilian Elections

This article aims to analyze the media literacy skills at work in the content shared by fans on Twitter during the #FandomsPeloVoto (#Fandomsforthe- Vote) campaign. In a convergence culture environment, media literacy comprises five skills: curation, creation, critical understanding, participation, and collaboration. Launched in May 2022, the campaign—carried out in partnership with Mídia Ninja, the National Student Union (União Nacional dos Estudantes, UNE), and the Brazilian Union of Secondary School Students (União Brasileira dos Estudantes Secundaristas, UBES)—brought together more than 100 pop culture fandoms in Brazil to mobilize 16- to 18-year-olds to obtain a voter registration card and be eligible to vote in the 2022 elections. It can be concluded that the activism of fandoms goes beyond transposing fan culture practices into the realm of political participation, also encompassing the critical interpretation of the sociopolitical issues that were part of the action and the creative production of posts on Twitter. Accordingly, #FandomsPeloVoto has aspects of political resistance, as one of its primary objectives is the removal of President Jair Bolsonaro, leader of the far right in Brazil, from power.

Overview of childhood vaccination coverage in Brazil and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic: Is our children’s health at risk? A review of pre-COVID-19 periods and during the COVID-19 pandemic

IntroductionThe coronavirus disease (COVID)-19 has had a great impact on several aspects related to the population’s health, including the vaccination adherence rate. This study describes how childhood vaccination coverage (CVC) in Brazil was affected by the pandemic in the period from 2020 to 2022 and explores the relationship between this data and the Human Development Index (HDI), and the number of votes received in the government with a right-wing political ideology. MethodsAn ecological analysis of CVC was carried out including 12 vaccines. The HDI was evaluated considering the HDI-General, HDI-Income, HDI-Longevity, and HDI-Education. The percentage of valid votes received by the former president (right-wing political ideology) was also obtained. Spearman correlation tests were applied to compare markers. ResultsDuring the period analyzed, it was observed a linear growth trend in CVC between 2015 and 2018 regarding all vaccines. However, from 2018 onwards, after the presidential elections in Brazil, the CVC reduced significantly, showing an even more pronounced decrease with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. This reduction in CVC observed for some vaccines was related to the higher percentage of votes for the government with a right-wing political ideology, especially in relation to the BCG (bacillus Calmette and Guerin) and pentavalent (protecting against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, hepatitis B, and Haemophilus influenzae type b bacteria) vaccines. In addition, when analyzing the HDI, it was observed that the lowest values of this indicator were associated with a more expressive reduction in CVC, mainly related to yellow fever, pentavalent, 10-valent pneumococcal conjugate, Human rotavirus, and triple viral (protecting against measles, mumps, and rubella – MMR) vaccines. ConclusionAlthough Brazil has a successful and exemplary record in combating several diseases, mainly due to the high rate of CVC, the continuous reduction in this coverage must be thoroughly evaluated by health managers.

O consumo simbólico da desinformação ancorada na credibilidade jornalística: análise de elementos de legitimação do discurso nas Eleições de 2022

The aim of this article is to analyze the discursive strategies that refer to the attribute of credibility in pieces of disinformation that circulated in the 2022 Brazilian Elections. We will use the methodological assumptions of the case study and criticaldiscourse analysis and, as a corpus, we chose pieces of disinformation that focus on allegations of fraud in the electronic ballot boxes published on Twitter (now X) and Telegram (with circulation in other digital and networked environments) and in (supposedly) journalistic companies such as Jovem Pan, during the first and second rounds of the presidential elections. We observed the use of six different discursive strategies -some of them also used in journalism -in which the aim is to lend credibility to misleading and fabricated content.

Monitoramento das eleições brasileiras de 2022: affordances das plataformas YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter e Facebook e os usos em campanhas digitais

In this paper, we discuss the results of monitoring the 2022 Brazilian elections on YouTube, Instagram, Tik Tok, Twitter/X and Facebook platforms based on the affordances present in each of them. Based on the bibliographic review, we propose a typology of affordances, classifying them according to their application in political campaigns and information flows. Next, we present the methodological procedures for the collection carried out, observing the affordances visible in the algorithmic architecture of the platforms. By analyzing the data, we identify and discuss the affordances on each platform and the ways in which they link with political content. We conclude by pointing out how the specific strategies are configured for each environment, in addition to highlighting the construction of a broader narrative, woven by a wider range of actors, in which the platforms participate in different ways in its composition.

Bubble reachers and uncivil discourse in polarized online public sphere.

Early optimism saw possibilities for social media to renew democratic discourse, marked by hopes for individuals from diverse backgrounds to find opportunities to learn from and interact with others different from themselves. This optimism quickly waned as social media seemed to breed ideological homophily marked by "filter bubbles" or "echo chambers." A typical response to the sense of fragmentation has been to encourage exposure to more cross-partisan sources of information. But do outlets that reach across partisan lines in fact generate more civil discourse? And does the civility of discourse hosted by such outlets vary depending on the political context in which they operate? To answer these questions, we identified bubble reachers, users who distribute content that reaches other users with diverse political opinions in recent presidential elections in Brazil, where populism has deep roots in the political culture, and Canada, where the political culture is comparatively moderate. Given that background, this research studies unexplored properties of content shared by bubble reachers, specifically the quality of conversations and comments it generates. We examine how ideologically neutral bubble reachers differ from ideologically partisan accounts in the level of uncivil discourse they provoke, and explore how this varies in the context of the two countries considered. Our results suggest that while ideologically neutral bubble reachers support less uncivil discourse in Canada, the opposite relationship holds in Brazil. Even non-political content by ideologically neutral bubble reachers elicits a considerable amount of uncivil discourse in Brazil. This indicates that bubble reaching and incivility are moderated by the national political context. Our results complicate the simple hypothesis of a universal impact of neutral bubble reachers across contexts.

Voter fraud and questioning elections in Brazil: multi-platform analysis of political actors, conspiratorial bias and content moderation

Este artigo investiga a presença de atores, de conspiração e a moderação em conteúdos on-line com alegações infundadas de fraude eleitoral publicados durante as eleições municipais de 2020 no Brasil. Partindo do entendimento de que o acirramento dos conflitos entre as elites políticas influencia o sistema político e, por conseguinte, a estabilidade das instituições e normas democráticas, o artigo usa um corpus de 1.426.687 posts do Facebook, YouTube e Twitter para examinar a posição de influência de quem publica sobre contestação eleitoral, entender o espraiamento desses conteúdos entre meios e as características que dão a eles um apelo conspiratório. Mostra que essa pauta é mobilizada por políticos e outros líderes de opinião da direita radical. A maioria desses conteúdos se baseia em opinião política, sem menção a fontes, e tem caráter eminentemente conspiratório.

AFTER DEPLATFORMING: RETRACING CONTENT MODERATION EFFECTS ACROSS PLATFORMS AND A POST-AMERICAN WEB

Half a decade ago, social media platforms were widely perceived as revolutionary devices for maximizing political expression around the world. By opening the floodgates to expression, however, the same platforms were also accused of opening the floodgates of hate – allowing, for example, the self-claimed “revolutionary” return of ideas, speech and actors long thought to be relegated to the dustbins of history. This panel examines a three-fold revolution, namely: populist revolutions (on the right) facilitated by agnostic content moderation philosophies; the internal revolutions that platform content moderation underwent to address the political violence of the former; and the adjustments that digital methods research needs to adopt to facilitate content moderation research in a “post-API” environment. The first paper of this panel examines how Twitter’s content moderation has undergone several arbitrary changes before reaching a form of “normative plasticity”, with reinforcement techniques such as demotion and other forms of conditional content obfuscation. The second paper looks at how, despite making profound changes to prevent furthering political violence during elections, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram have tended to moderate the Brazilian elections in a dislocated fashion, turning a blind eye to Brazilian militaristic content and focusing instead on what it primarily moderates in a US context. Finally, the third paper offers a set of methods for empirical researchers to capture and study content moderation metadata over time. All three papers aim to contribute to attempts at archiving and studying speech moderation as a public good, in an international context.

An Epidemic of Transphobia on French Turf

On September 22, 2022, a one-day international symposium took place in Rio de Janeiro: Epidemia de transfobia. This was actually a counter-event organized in response to another international event, Congresso Brazileiro de Transsexualidade, whose opening lecture, planned on the same day in Belo Horizonte, was entitled: A epidemia transgênero. This four- day conference was to close exactly a week before the Presidential election in Brazil, on October 2nd. Four years earlier, Jair Bolsonaro had used the homophobic fake news of a ‘gay kit’ allegedly distributed in schools to prevail over his opponent from the Workers’ Party, and anti-trans political rhetoric had since played an important role in his campaign against ‘gender ideology’. However, the transphobic conference was soon cancelled – probably due to widespread opposition, starting with that of the National Association of Travestis and Transsexuals (ANTRA). Still, the counter-event was maintained.

Economic Crises, Subjective Well-Being, and Vote Switching: The Case of Brazil’s 2018 Presidential Election

This paper examines the influence of the 2015 economic crisis on subjective well-being (SWB) and the withdrawal of support for the incumbent party during the 2018 presidential election in Brazil. Using Gallup World Poll data and a post-election national survey conducted by the Center for Studies on Public Opinion, we find that the economic crisis influenced through different channels both SWB and vote switching. Worsening personal economic circumstances explain the decline in SWB in the aftermath of the crisis, while deteriorating perceptions about the economy explain the vote switching during the presidential election in 2018. Leadership disapproval played a role in both, but to different degrees. One possible explanation for the limited effect of personal economic circumstances on voting behavior in Brazil is that those who were most severely affected by the economic downturn, specifically the poorest individuals in the country, did not see voting for Bolsonaro as a feasible or desirable choice.

From Religious Populism to Civil Religion: a Discourse Analysis of Bolsonaro’s and Lula’s Inaugural and Victory Speeches

Religion played a major role during the presidential elections in Brazil in 2018 and 2022. Although much has been written about Bolsonaro’s religious influence on Brazilian politics, there is a need to understand how politicians on other sides of the political spectrum have positioned themselves in regard to religion. Thus, through transdisciplinary research rooted in Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) explanation phase, this article seeks to assess both Bolsonaro’s and Lula’s victory and inauguration speeches and their intricacies that appeal to various sorts of politicized religion by problematizing contrasting meanings in discourses of these Brazilian leaders and exploring how social circumstances have enabled or provided conditions for the reproduction of power relations between these politicians and the realm of religion, primarily Christianity. Hence, the article questions: First, which forms of political religion are expressed in the two presidents’ victory speeches and inauguration speeches in the aftermath of the last two general elections? Second, in what ways have both presidents been contributing to the politicization of religion and to what degree do Lula and Bolsonaro differ in this regard? It concludes by arguing that although Bolsonaro’s exclusionary religious populism can be contrasted to Lula’s inclusionary civil religion, there are also some important similarities in their discourses as both politicize Brazilian religion.

Far-right memespheres and platform affordances: the effects of environmental opacity on the spread of extremist memes on Twitter and WhatsApp

ABSTRACT Research on WhatsApp political memes is still scarce. Nevertheless, since the 2018 Brazilian elections, the platform has attracted the attention of the media in general, after complaints of its use to spread misinformation and extremist messages by supporters of the Bolsonaro Government. Despite this, the effects of the WhatsApp platform on the user practices of sharing memes are still poorly understood. This article proposes a cross-platform comparative approach, between the digital memes on Twitter and those on WhatsApp, to better understand how user practices are affected by some of the structural singularities of these platforms. Based on a sample of 1,794 memes collected on both platforms, this study finds that there is a higher than expected frequency of ideological memes on WhatsApp in relation to Twitter. The findings suggest that WhatsApp’s environmental opacity favors the emergence of an extremist memesphere.