🗳 Election Observatory: May 5

— by Paulo Abrão, executive director of the Washington Brazil Office

Brazil’s 2026 electoral contest is increasingly overlapping with a broader struggle for control over the country’s institutions. At stake is no longer merely the choice of the next government, but also the effective capacity to govern in an environment marked by fragmented power and growing institutional assertiveness.

In recent days, Congress has consolidated itself as a central actor in this process. The Senate’s unprecedented rejection of a presidential Supreme Court nominee, along with the congressional override of an executive veto on legislation related to the 2022 coup attempt, signal a legislature willing to impose direct political costs on the government.

More than isolated events, these developments point to a rebalancing of power among branches of government, with implications that are likely to extend into the next political cycle.

At the electoral level, the presidential race remains defined by equilibrium and structural constraints. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Flávio Bolsonaro remain locked in a statistical tie, while high rejection rates limit both candidates’ capacity to expand beyond their core bases.

At the same time, the government is repositioning its economic agenda as a political instrument. Broad debt-relief measures aimed at households and small businesses suggest an effort to reconnect with financially strained segments of the electorate and to shape the electoral environment through high-impact public policy. The use of economic policy as an electoral tool is not new in Brazil. It dates back at least to the Real Plan's monetary stabilization in the 1990s.

The institutional and international dimensions are also increasingly intertwined. Tensions with the United States, trade disputes and the prospect of high-level bilateral meetings underscore the growing external exposure of Brazil’s election. Meanwhile, debates over press freedom, institutional trust and the integrity of the electoral system remain salient, reflecting persistent challenges to democratic consolidation.

The 2026 election is thus being defined not only by the selection of an immediate winner, but by the conditions for governability that will follow. In a context of fragmented power, the central question is no longer only who will win, but who will be able to govern.

Brazil's Senate dealt President Lula his worst defeat in three non-consecutive terms last Wednesday, rejecting Supreme Court nominee Jorge Messias by 4 votes to 34 — the first such rejection in 132 years.

Messias had bent over backward to win the votes of conservative senators, professing his evangelical Christian faith, opposing abortion, and downplaying the Bolsonaro-led coup attempt. It was enough to clear a committee vote, but not the full Senate.

Hours before ballots were cast, Lula's whips projected 45 votes in Messias’s favor. They got 11 fewer — a result that lays bare the government's political miscalculation and cracks within its own base. Lula can present a new Supreme Court nominee, but the seat will likely remain open until after the 2026 elections.

Several Bolsonarista senators framed their “no” votes not as opposition to Messias personally, but as a warning shot at the Supreme Court — with the impeachment of justices now openly on their agenda ahead of October's general elections.

Senate President Davi Alcolumbre led the charge to sink the nomination, making it clear that any future nominee will require his blessing. The implications of this extend well beyond the court: every pending administration appointment — for the Central Bank, securities regulator and antitrust watchdog — must now clear a newly emboldened Congress. Technocratic picks just got a lot harder to sell.

One day later, Congress overrode Lula's veto of legislation reducing sentences for participants in the 2022 coup attempt, including for former President Jair Bolsonaro himself. His 27-year sentence is expected to drop to roughly 22 years — enough to qualify him for a lower-security custody regime after little more than three years, compared with the nearly six he faced under the original conviction.

Brazil's government launched a sweeping debt relief program aimed at helping millions of families, students, small businesses and farmers renegotiate overdue debts and clear their credit records.

Brazilians who earn up to BRL 8,105 (around USD 1,640) a month — equal to five times the minimum wage — can renegotiate credit card, overdraft and personal loan debts that are between 90 days and two years past due, with discounts ranging from 30% to 90% depending on how long the debt has been delinquent.

The restructured debt carries a maximum monthly interest rate of 1.99% (the country's benchmark rate sits at 14.5% a year), payable over up to 48 months with a cap of BRL 15,000 per person per bank.

With a presidential election on the horizon and Lula's approval ratings under pressure, the program is as much political as it is economic — a high-visibility, broad-based intervention targeting the millions of Brazilians struggling with household debt. Data from Serasa Experian show that 49% of adults have overdue liabilities.

Brazil outranked the US for the first time in the World Press Freedom Index, released Thursday by Reporters Without Borders (RSF). After a century of expanding press rights, the US is now in a sustained free fall — and Donald Trump's return to power has made it significantly worse, according to the organization.

The US has long positioned itself as a global benchmark for press freedom. Ceding ground to Brazil — a country where 30 journalists were murdered in the past decade — underscores how rapidly American press conditions have eroded.

Brazil's relative rise isn't a press freedom success story. Media ownership in the country remains in the hands of a few family conglomerates, local journalism is collapsing, and independent outlets are fighting for survival. What changed is that Lula ended the institutional hostility of the Bolsonaro years — a low bar, but enough to move the needle.

While not cited by RSF, recent reports exposed a dark side of powerful media groups — from the Metrópoles website's ties to the fraudulent Banco Master to newspaper Estadão getting millions of reais from big banks in exchange for its editorial independence.

Presidents Lula and Trump could meet in Washington on Thursday. The meeting had been originally scheduled for March but was postponed due to the war in Iran. Neither side has officially confirmed the sitdown, but a Brazilian team of diplomats has left for Washington to set up Lula's trip.

The two leaders briefly found warmer footing late last year. But the bilateral relationship has since fallen into uncertain ground again. 

In mid April, the Trump administration expelled a Brazilian Federal Police officer who attempted to have former Brazilian Congressman Alexandre Ramagem deported from the US on an expired visa. Ramagem, a Bolsonaro ally convicted to 16 years in prison for his role in the 2022 coup attempt, is a fugitive from Brazilian justice. Washington officials, however, said Brazil tried to bypass formal extradition procedures.

A Section 301 investigation into alleged unfair Brazilian trade practices and tensions over rare earth mining access are both hovering in the background. The Brazilian government is reviewing the USD 2.8 billion sale of Serra Verde — a rare earths mine in Minaçu, Goiás — to a US company, announced in April.

Brazil's electronic voting system turns 30 this month — but nearly half the country still doesn't trust it. A recent Quaest poll shows 43% of Brazilians doubt the system's integrity, even as three decades of audits have produced zero proven cases of fraud.

The skepticism has always been politically opportunistic — politicians across the spectrum have questioned the machines, almost always after losing elections and never with supporting evidence. But these attacks became systematic after 2018, when Jair Bolsonaro's presidential campaign took off.

Brazil adopted electronic voting in 1996 to solve real problems with paper ballots — including (but not limited to) stuffed ballot boxes, manipulated counts and ghost voters. By 2000, the system covered the entire electorate. It has since been upgraded with biometric identification and encryption. In 30 years, no lawsuit has ever successfully proven fraud.

Journalism and democracy are inseparable — and right now, both are under threat. A free press is not a luxury; it is the infrastructure of accountable governance, and when it weakens, so does everything else. That is why your support matters. 

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