‹ 2014  2022
| ||||
| 2018 Brazil Presidential Election | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7 October 2018 (first round) 28 October 2018 (second round) | ||||
 |
 | |||
| Nominee | Jair Bolsonaro | Ciro Gomes | ||
| Party | Patriot Party | Brazilian Social Democracy Party | ||
| Home state | Rio de Janeiro | Ceará | ||
| Running mate | Hamilton Mourão | Fernando Haddad | ||
| States carried | 15+DF | 11 | ||
| Popular vote | 57,797,847 | 47,040,906 | ||
| Percentage | 55.13% | 44.87% | ||
Incumbent President
Michel Temer Brazilian Social Democracy Party
President-elect
Jair Bolsonaro Patriot Party | ||||
The 2018 Brazil Presidential Election was held in two rounds. The first took place on 7 October 2018, and the second on 28 October 2018, both on Sundays. It was the 8th presidential election in the country after the promulgation of the Federal Constitution of 1988. Patriot Party candidate Jair Bolsonaro was elected 40th President of Brazil, defeating toucan candidate Ciro Gomes. The candidate and his running-mate were sworn in on 1 January 2019 for a four-year term.
In the previous presidential election in 2014, Dilma Rousseff was re-elected president. Inaugurated in 2015, she ended up being removed from her position by the National Congress in August 2016 for administrative irresponsibility and replaced by its vice president, Michel Temer, who decided not to run for re-election in 2018.
Overseen by the Superior Electoral Court, the 2018 presidential election had some different rules compared to previous elections, such as the prohibition of corporate financing for candidates and an electoral campaign with a shorter period. The internet gained more space in elections with the release of collections through crowdfunding tools.
Background[]
Dilma's second term and crisis[]
On 26 October 2014, in the 2014 presidential election, President Dilma Rousseff (Brazilian Social Democracy Party) was re-elected with 51.6% of the valid votes, defeating Levy Fidelix (Patriot Party) in one of the fiercest presidential elections in the history of Brazil. Rousseff's reelection marked the fourth consecutive presidential election won by the PSDB, and the sixth, also consecutive, in which the two main candidates were affiliated with PSDB and Patriot Party. Dilma began her second term in January 2015 weakened amid a serious economic and political crisis. The economic crisis has led the government to take unpopular measures, including billionaire budget cuts and tax increases. In parallel, revelations of the Lava Jato operation were accentuated and involved several government and opposition politicians. With Dilma's unpopularity, anti-government demonstrations mobilized millions of people demanding the president's departure. In August 2016, the Senate ordered 61 to 20 the president's impeachment on the grounds that she had violated budget laws.
Temer administration and the continuation of the crisis[]
After personally engaging in obtaining favorable votes for the approval of her predecessor's impeachment, Temer became the 39th President of Brazil. Temer formed a broad ally base in Congress and managed to pass some of the measures he considered essential, including the New Tax Regime and a Labor Reform. Some economic indicators showed improvement, such as inflation and the growth of the gross domestic product, while unemployment increased.
Dilma's impeachment and the start of the Temer administration weren't able to stop the political crisis. In 2017, Temer was denounced twice by the Attorney General's Office on suspicion of passive corruption, obstruction of justice and criminal organization, being the first President of Brazil the target of a criminal complaint during his term of office. With a rejection rate of over 80 percent in some surveys carried out in the pre-campaign, Temer, who ran for re-election in 2018, ended up giving up on running.
Candidates[]
The party conventions confirmed 7 candidates for the presidency of Brazil, the largest number of candidates in an election in the history of Brazil. Progressisves presented the first presidential candidate since 1990. In 2017, PSDB had announced the pre-candidature of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. However, Lula, imprisoned for corruption and money laundering, had his candidature canceled due to his conviction in the second instance, thus violating the provisions to be considered eligible under the Clean Record Law. In May 2018, PSDB chose the former governor of Ceará Ciro Gomes, who chose former São Paulo mayor Fernando Haddad as running mate.
| 2018 Patriot Party ticket | |
| Jair Bolsonaro | Hamilton Mourão |
|---|---|
| for president | for vice-president |
| Federal Deputy for Rio de Janeiro
(1994-2019) |
No Political Office |
| 2018 Brazilian Social Democracy Party ticket | |
| Ciro Gomes | Fernando Haddad |
|---|---|
| for president | for vice-president |
| Governor of Ceará
(1991-1994) |
Mayor of São Paulo
(2013–2016) |
| 2018 New Party ticket | |
| João Amoêdo | Christian Lohbauer |
|---|---|
| for president | for vice-president |
| No Political Office | No Political Office |
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Campaign[]
Internet Influence[]
As in the 2014 election, in 2018 the internet played a very important role in the election, according to an analysis of data from the most popular social networks in Brazil. On Facebook, with almost 178 million Brazilian users in 2018, there were around 785 million interactions related to the election during the three and a half months of the campaign, between August and October, with an average of 11.9 million interactions per day and 15.2 interactions per user.While Twitter, on the other hand, received nearly 80 million messages about the elections, having several times the hashtags "#BolsonaroPresident" and "#CiroForSovereignBrazil", alluding to the two second-round candidates Bolsonaro and Ciro, at the top of the list of most commented topics in the world. Also according to studies by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) through the National Household Sample Survey (PNAD), the percentage of the Brazilian population that had some type of internet access jumped from 54.4% in 2014 to 67.1 % in 2018, representing an increase of nearly 27.4 million people between election years. With this expressive increase in the use of the internet by Brazilians, this medium came to be widely used by candidates to spread their ideals and promote a closer relationship with users in relation to the old methods of communication. According to Luli Radfahrer, PhD in Communication Sciences, the increase in the use of the internet has promoted a large online discussion forum, with representation from most social sectors, generating an exchange of information that could help voters choose their vote. Another factor of the internet that gained strength in the 2018 elections were memes, satires of situations that are shared with the intention of humor. With the emergence of new models of humor, especially on digital platforms, it started to be used also in the electoral context, also acting to alleviate moments of tension and even promote learning in a relaxed way. According to a survey carried out by Viktor Chagas, Ph.D. in Communication Sciences, candidates Cabo Daciolo and Marina Silva were the most protagonists of these memes during a sampling carried out during nine debates on five television channels (Rede Bandeirantes, Sistema Brasileiro de Televisão, TV Aparecida, Rede Record and Rede Globo), which were shared on the social network Twitter, with 187 and 147 memes each, respectively.
Jair Bolsonaro's Attack[]
Jair Bolsonaro was stabbed on 6 September 2018 while campaigning in the city of Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais and interacting with supporters. Bolsonaro's son, Flávio, has stated that his father's wounds were only superficial and he was recovering in hospital. Police arrested and identified the attacker as Adelio Bispo de Oliveira. Flávio Bolsonaro later stated that the wounds inflicted seemed worse than initially thought. He tweeted about his father's condition, explaining that the perforation reached part of the liver, the lung and part of the intestine. He also stated that Bolsonaro had lost a large amount of blood, arriving at the hospital with a pressure of 10/3, but had since stabilized. Most of the other candidates in the presidential race (from both sides of the political spectrum), and the then-Brazilian president, Michel Temer, condemned the attack. After being stabbed, Bolsonaro didn't attend any further debates.
Fake News[]
The election worried candidates, voters, political parties, specialists, authorities and electoral justice courts by the dissemination of fake news that could change the conscious decision of the electorate. Parties and politicians have filed complaints against fake news, and various media outlets have created groups to check the rumors; in the National Congress, bills are being processed to criminally classify fake news crimes on the internet. WhatsApp application was the main vector for the dissemination of fake news.
According to a survey by the Research Group on Public Policies for Access to Information (Gpopai), at the University of São Paulo (USP), around 12 million people had shared political fake news until June of that year. The campaigns of Jair Bolsonaro and Ciro Gomes were suspected of using the mass shooting of messages during the electoral campaign, and PSDB campaign was fined by the Superior Electoral Court, which understood that negative news was promoted illegally.
Debates[]
Two debates were held on 9 and 17 August, featuring 7 presidential candidates: Bolsonaro, Silva, Gomes, Meirelles, Boulos, Daciolo and Amoêdo. The 9 August debate was moderated by Ricardo Boechat, and the 17 August debate was moderated by Amanda Klein, Boris Casoy and Mariana Godoy. Bolsonaro didn't participate in further debates after he was attacked on 6 September.
These occurred on 20 September (moderated by Joyce Ribeiro), 26 September (moderated by Carlos Nascimento), 30 September (moderated by Adriana Araújo and Celso Freitas), and 4 October (moderated by William Bonner).
A vice presidential debate was held on 5 September featuring four candidates; Fernando Haddad didn't attend.
While several debates were scheduled for the second round, none were held. Debates planned for 12 October, 14 October, and 15 October were cancelled due to Bolsonaro's health issues. A debate scheduled for 21 October was cancelled after the campaigns were unable to agree to terms.
Results[]
In the first round of the election, Bolsonaro received approximately 46% of the votes against Ciro's 29%, with Amoêdo coming in third with more than 12% of the votes. In the second round, Bolsonaro defeated Ciro by approximately ten percentage points, with the deputy receiving more than 55% of the vote against less than 45% for Ciro. Bolsonaro took office on 1 January 2019 as President of Brazil.