Brazil election thread

Lula successor (and former Chief of Staff) Dilma Rousseff will become Brazil's first female president.

She is supported by the PT, PMDB, PCdoB, PDT, PRB, PR, PSB, PSC, PTC, and PTN. In the last Congress, those nine parties held 297 of the 513 seats.

But electoral alliances in Brazil shift between different offices; will Dilma Rousseff get support for her program from Congress? Stay tuned.

Their parties are very fragmented because of their geography; most parties have strongholds in one or more states, but at the state and congressional level the alliances are different in different states. A zoo.

The PT has 5 state governorships. However, it only rules one of the ten richest states, Bahia. In Congress, it's the largest party in Minas Gerais, Rio Grande do Sul, Pernambuco, Acre, and Mato Grosso do Sul; the largest of Dilma's alliance in Sao Paulo  and Paraná, and the largest left party of Dilma's alliance in Bahia and Ceara.

The PMDB (Democratic Movement, centre-left) is the largest party in Goiás, Santa Catarina, Distrito Federal, Tocantins, Amapa, and the largest of Dilma's alliance in Bahia and Ceara.  

The PSB (Brazilian Socialist Party) is the largest left party in Maranhao, Rio Grande do Norte, Tocantins and Paraíba.

The PDT (Democratic Labour Party) is the largest left party in Espirito Santo.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

Left wins in legislative elections:

Quote:

For the tables below, I have attempted to group the various political parties into their current alliances/coalitions.  This is not as easy as it sounds because parties are not monolithic and can sometimes shift allegiance out of political expedience.  These tables show the current partisan composition of Congress and what it will look like when the new term begins in February 2011.

In the Chamber of Deputies, the governing coalition also increased its share, but not by as much as they had hoped to.  Some forecasts showed PT with the potential to pick up over 100 seats, but they were only able to reach 88 (still, an increase of 9).  The coalition as a whole picked up 14 seats, but it is interesting to notice where they were picked up.  All of the parties in the "left wing" of the coalition gained seats, while the PMDB lost 11 and can no longer claim the largest single party block.

The opposition again lost seats, and again this was most brutally felt by the far right Democrats, who dropped from 56 down to only 43 seats (in 1998 they held 105).

GOVERNING COALITION
297
311
+14

Left wing
141
165
+24

Workers' Party (PT)
79
88
+9

Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB)
27
34
+7

Democratic Labor Party (PDT)
23
28
+5

Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB)
12
15
+3

Centrist wing
156
146
-10

Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB)*
90
79
-11

Republic Party (PR)
41
41
nc

Christian Social Party (PSC)
16
17
+1

Brazilian Republican Party (PRB)
7
8
+1

Christian Labor Party (PTC)
2
1
-1

 

OPPOSITION COALITION
156
136
-20

Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB)
59
53
-6

Democrats (DEM)
56
43
-13

Brazilian Labor Party (PTB)**
22
21
-1

Popular Socialist Party (PPS)
15
12
-3

National Mobilization Party (PMN)
3
4
+1

Labor Party of Brazil (PTdoB)
1
3
+2

 

Independent Parties

Progressive Party (PP)#
40
41
+1

Green Party (PV)
14
15
+1

Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL)
3
3
nc

Humanist Solidarity Party (PHS)
3
2
-1

Progressive Republican Party (PRP)
0
2
+2

Brazilian Labor Renewal Party (PRTB)
0
2
+2

Liberal Social Party (PSL)
0
1
+1

Quote:

The Senate created the most difficulties for Lula during his Presidency.  Although the governing coalition is listed here with 42 seats, not all PMDB members were reliable votes, and the opposition block (PSDB and DEM) was very strong.

In the elections, PT added 4 seats and the PMDB added 3, but the most dramatic change was that of the Democrats, who plummeting from 15 seats down to 6, a loss of 9.  Some very big names in Lula's opposition went down to defeat: Tasso Jereissati, Arthur Virgílio, Heráclito Fortes, Marco Maciel, Efraim Morais, and Mão Santa, among others.  With the possible inclusion of PP (or even PTB) in the governing coalition, at least 50 reliable votes can now be found.

GOVERNING COALITION
42
49
+7

Left wing
19
23
+4

Workers' Party (PT)
10
14
+4

Democratic Labor Party (PDT)
5
4
-1

Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB)
3
3
nc

Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB)
1
2
+1

Centrist wing
23
26
+3

Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB)*
17
20
+3

Republic Party (PR)
3
4
+1

Brazilian Republican Party (PRB)
2
1
-1

Christian Social Party (PSC)
1
1
nc

 

OPPOSITION COALITION
36
25
-11

Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB)
12
11
-1

Democrats (DEM)
15
6
-9

Brazilian Labor Party (PTB)**
8
6
-2

Popular Socialist Party (PPS)
1
1
nc

National Mobilization Party (PMN)
0
1
+1

 

Independent Parties

Progressive Party (PP)#
1
5
+4

Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL)
1
2
+1

Green Party (PV)
1
0
-1

Note that, despite the strong showing of the Green Party candidate for president, her coattails carried no weight: one more Congress seat, one less Senate seat. 

This author classifies the PPS as an opposition party, although they used to be a left party, a former communist party.

The PSOL are the former left wing of the PT.

Because Brazil has a totally open-list system with large state-wide districts, "big names" tend to win even when they form or join a micro-party, but then they change hats afterwards. This accounts for some of the micro-parties.

autoworker wrote:

What percentage of registered voters actually vote?  What percentage of potentially eligible voters are registered?  Is the information accurate?  Why or why not?

In the presidential race, across Brazil the TSE (electoral tribunal) reports 81.88% turnout. I don't know about registration. In the 2006 election for Congress the turnout across Brazil was 83.27%. but 12% cast blank ballots or spoiled ballots (some might have voted only for President and/or Governor.)  

JKR wrote:

What's the advantages of party-list over STV?

In a smaller state like Espirito Santo with only 10 MPs, STV might be workable. But even there, they saw 73 candidates.

Even the Federal District, with only eight MPs, had 100 candidates. They elected three PT, one PDT, one PMDB, two PR and one PMN. Even if the other parties had run only one candidate each in an STV election, that would mean 21 more candidates from the PSDB, DEM, PSB, PC do B, PPS, PP, PSC, PRB, PTB, PRP, PSDC, PRTB, PT do B, PV, PHS, PSOL, PTC, PSL, PSTU, PTN, and PCO. But that's not much voter choice, by Brazilian standards.

You might want an "above-the-line" option, where a voter could just rank the parties. That would actually result in more of a closed system, where the order on the party list mattered. This in turn might elect more women, which Brazil badly needs. But true STV fans hate the Australian above-the-line option.

Speaking of the PSOL, which some babblers would cheer for, they had three in the outgoing Congress, and apparently three this time. Ivan Valente from São Paulo was the congressional party leader in the last congress, and was re-elected with an increased vote, but not enough to bring another of the state's 70 deputies with him. In Rio de Janeiro incumbent Chico Alencar came storming back with 3.01% of the vote, which may not sound much but it put him second out of 46 elected, with enough votes to bring with him a young gay black journalist and university professor named Jean Wyllys, who became known all over Brazil in 2005 when he won the TV reality show Big Brother Brazil. They picked up a Senate seat in Para (whose capital is Belem, the gateway to the Amazon): a 51-year-old woman teacher named Marinor Brito, who won because the PT and PMDB candidates were both disqualified -- but they have appealed, which would cost her the seat if either wins. In the last Congress the PSOL had Luciano Genro from Rio Grande do Sul, but he lost his seat this time.

JKR wrote:

Why do so many candidates run for office when their chances of getting elected are so slim?

ACE summarizes the system as of 2002:

Quote:

The rules governing legislative elections have remained essentially unchanged since they were first established in 1946.

Candidates, seeking to be elected for the seats which their parties gain, compete among themselves for the votes their parties obtain. This is said to lead to personalism, which is considered to be at the root of the weakness of Brazil's political parties, to clientelistic ties between voters and their representatives, and to a national legislature that is primarily concerned with local rather than national, and clientelistic rather than programmatic, issues. . . the view that it is personalism that mainly drives voters' decisions in elections to the legislature in Brazil is far from well established. Although the proportion of preference votes (when the voter chooses a specific candidate, not simply the party) is far larger than the proportion of party votes, these figures say very little about how voters actually decide. . . scattered evidence indicates that representatives who switch parties in the middle of the legislative term are less likely to be re-elected, which suggests that they are not able to carry with them the votes that got them elected in the first place.

Successful candidates, it is said, are those who bring 'pork' to their 'constituency'. In Brazil's multi-member district system, however, the individual member is one of at least eight representing the district, which makes it difficult to establish the link between a particular member and a new spending project. Even though some candidates may and do try to carve de facto geographic constituencies for themselves, this is not the only, and may not even be the most effective, way of getting into the Chamber of Deputies. One study of the geographical distribution of the votes of successful candidates demonstrates that in 1994 and 1998 only about 17 per cent of representatives adopted such a strategy, that is, were able to obtain the largest share of votes in a cluster of geographically concentrated localities. The others adopted different strategies, such as sharing with competitors a relatively defined geographic area, dominating localities that were distant from each other, or obtaining relatively small shares of their total vote in geographically dispersed areas. Given the level of competition of elections and the lack of legally protected constituencies, it is unlikely that a representative will feel safe about his or her 'bailiwick'. Indeed, rates of re-election are not very high: estimates put it at around 60 per cent of those who seek re-election. Thus, clientelism does not characterize, at least not exclusively, the ties between representatives and voters.

. . . elections are extremely competitive; the advantage of incumbency is relatively weak.

I suppose so many candidates run because they need only attract a relatively small number of votes to become one of the many MPs elected from their party in that state. The election is essentially an open primary.

Quote:

Party fragmentation in the Brazilian legislature has been held responsible for a number of the malaises the country has suffered from in the past 15 years. The high degree of fragmentation of the party system is usually attributed to a combination of factors, which include the electoral system and its individualistic tendencies . . .

This was intensified by the transition from the military dictatorship in March 1985:

Quote:

By that time, most Brazilian parties had already taken shape as loose national agglomerations of regional, candidate-centered machines. Two months later, the congress approved Constitutional Amendment No. 25, which 1) lowered the national and state thresholds for winning a seat in congress, 2) eliminated the military regime's ban on party-switching, and 3) eliminated sanctions against legislators who broke party discipline in congress. In December, it passed laws allowing coalitions in legislative elections and allowing voters to split their votes in executive and legislative elections. All three reforms made it easier for small parties and regional parties to win seats and strengthened candidates vis-à-vis parties (Mainwaring 1991 and 1997). The previous electoral law already contained incentives favorable to these outcomes in that it provided for proportional representation in large-magnitude districts with open-list voting, which meant that preference voting for candidates completely determined the assignment of seats within parties. The new laws intensified the independence of candidates by allowing winning candidates to keep their seats even if their party or alliance failed to pass the threshold, if they would switch parties within 60 days. The 1987-88 constituent assembly maintained all of these provisions.

I used to read comments that the Left in Brazil wanted to change to a closed-list system. However, this has not been pursued. I think Pippa Norris was right:

Quote:

The more moderate reforms would involve modifying certain features of the current proportional electoral system in Brazil, for example by introducing a moderately high (4 to 7%) national vote threshold; or by sharply reducing the mean district magnitude size by subdividing states to allow, say, 7 or 8 members per district, as in Spain or Poland. All these strategies could serve to slightly raise the hurdles facing minor parties while adjusting the number of seats awarded to the leading parties and retaining a PR electoral system.

 

The first new MP in the above list, young Professora Marcivânia Flexa, is the one I like best.

Amapa is the second-smallest of Brazil's 27 states. It has only 721,000 people. It's on the north side of the Amazon, with a little mining railway running north into the jungle. Sort of like Northern-Ontario-on-the-Amazon. Its capital has only 440,000 people.

But "Professora Marcivânia" (that's the name she put on the ballot) is not even from the capital. She's from its second city, Santana, with only 99,000 people; it's the port where the mining railway meets the Amazon. She wasn't even a state deputy until now. She was in charge of programs like the city's teen youth centre where 600 kids learned to play guitar, building low income housing, and so on.

And today she's one of 513 federal MPs, and one of 88 in the governing party's caucus (up from 79 or 83 last time), in a country of 197 million.

If anyone tells you this could never happen under an open-list proportional representation system: it did. She didn't get in by having a good list position. The PT nominated four candidates for the eight MPs. The party won enough votes to elect the top two vote-getters (a totally open list system). When the votes were counted, in fourth place was a lawyer Evandro Gama, deputy minister of Justice for Amapa. In third was Rocha do Sucatao, 52, a previous candidate. Second was Professora Marcivânia. First was an incumbent Professora Dalva. Women rule! 

New left women elected to Congress:

Professora Marcivânia Flexa, PT (Lula's party), 37, from Amapa, the second of two PT deputies (both women) from that state, was City of Santana Municipal Secretary for Labour and Social Action.

[img]http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_cDBQajHWa_M/S2IJ5roaZ9I/AAAAAAAAALQ/V8_5p361UB...

Flávia Morais, PDT, 41, from Goiás, the only PDT deputy among the 17 from that state, a former state deputy who left the PDSB, former Secretary of Citizenship and Labor of the State of Goiás.

[img]http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/hprofile-ak-snc4/hs342.snc4/41569_1491098684...

Luciana Santos, PC do B, 44, only Communist elected from Pernambuco. Mayor of Olinda since 2000, graduated in Electrical Engineering; the only Mayor in Brazil affiliated to the PC do B (Brazilian Communist Party).
[img]http://el.imguol.com/2010/fichas/PE/FPE170000000755.jpg[/img]

Rosane Ferreira, Green Party (PV), 47, only PV deputy among 30 from Parana, a nurse and state deputy.

[img]http://el.imguol.com/2010/fichas/PR/FPR160000000215.jpg[/img]

Jandira Feghali, PC do B, 53, only Communist elected from Rio de Janeiro, doctor, a federal MP from 1991 to 2006. Famous for having been the first MP to insist on her constitutional right to maternity leave when her youngest daughter was born. Was defeated for a Senate seat in 2006 when she favoured decriminalization of abortion. Most recently Secretary for Culture of the City of Rio de Janeiro.

[img]http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/hprofile-ak-snc4/hs446.snc4/49133_1000010581...

Erika Kokay, PT, 53, from the Federal District (the third of three PT deputies from those eight seats), was general secretary of the National Confederation of Bank Employees and head of the CUT (Unified Workers' Central) in the Federal District.

[img]http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/hprofile-ak-snc4/hs355.snc4/41702_1000012364...

Iolanda Ota, PSB (Socialist Party), 54, third of seven PSB deputies elected from Sao Paulo. She is notable as the mother of Yves Ota, killed by kidnappers in 1997 at eight years of age. Also, she is one of only three Japanese-ancestry MPs.

[img]http://el.imguol.com/2010/fichas/SP/FSP250000002834.jpg[/img]

Luci Choinacki, PT, 56, fourth of four PT deputies from Santa Catarina.

[img]http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/hprofile-ak-snc4/hs171.ash2/41628_1000014043...

Benedita da Silva, PT, 68, former Governor of Rio De Janeiro, the first black woman to govern a Brazilian state, Lula's first Minister of Social Action, had to resign. Stood third out of five PT deputies from Rio.

[img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2b/Beneditadasilva...

New women Senators from left:

Gleisi Hoffmann, PT, 45, Parana, a lawyer, she was active municipally and as a member of Lula's transition team in 2002, becoming financial director of a giant hydro project, while her husband Paul Bernardo became Lula's Minister of Planning, Budget and Management. She ran for Senate in 2006 but was narrowly defeated, elected to Curitiba City Council in 2008.

[img]http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/hprofile-ak-snc4/hs642.snc3/27525_1366070530...

Angela Portela, PT, 48, Roraima, a teacher, Secretary of Labour and Social Welfare of the Government of Roraima, 2002-2004, federal deputy since 2006.

[img]http://el.imguol.com/2010/fichas/RR/FRR230000000506.jpg[/img]

Vanessa Grazziotin, PC do B, 49, from Amazonas, a federal deputy since 1999, defeated influential incumbent conservative Artur in a very tight race.

[img]http://el.imguol.com/2010/fichas/AM/FAM40000000292.jpg[/img]

Marinor Brito, PSOL, 51, Para, a public school teacher and city councillor. She benefited from the new Law of Clean Record, in which the Electoral Court relied in disallowing the candidacies of Jader Barbalho (PMDB) and Paulo Rocha (PT), after they got more votes than her. As the Supreme Court has not determined the applicability of the Clean Record Law in these elections, the victory of Marinor is still provisional.

[img]http://el.imguol.com/2010/fichas/PA/FPA140000000121.jpg[/img]

Lídice da Mata, PSB, 54, Bahia. In 1993 she was elected the first woman Mayor of Salvador, state deputy in 1998, federal deputy since 2006.

[img]http://el.imguol.com/2010/fichas/BA/FBA50000000916.jpg[/img]

Marta Suplicy, PT, 65, Sao Paulo, former Mayor of Sao Paulo, previously Lula's Minister of Tourism, previously a psychologist who providing sex advice on a popular show named Woman TV.

[img]http://el.imguol.com/2010/fichas/SP/FSP250000001430.jpg[/img]

A bad example of Brazil's model: with 39 federal deputies from the state of Bahia, all elected at large across the large state, they elected only one woman. Alice Portugal, 51, was elected to her third term. She is under the Communist Party label, but as part of the left alliance in Bahia called "PRA BAHIA SEGUIR MUDANDO" with Dilma's PT, the Democratic Labour Party, the centre-left PRB and the centrist Progressive Party, which won 22 of the 39 seats (10 PT, 4 PDT, 4 PP, 3 PC do B, 1 PRB.) 

[img]http://www.aliceportugal.org.br/site/images/stories/Alice_Portugal.jpg[/...