In social networks, Olívio Dutra (PT) appears the most, followed by Hamilton Mourão (Republicanos), close to Bolsonarism

Two weeks before the election, which will take place on Sunday, October 2nd, a poll by Ipec-Inteligência, commissioned by Grupo RBS, showed that Olívio Dutra (PT) and Ana Amélia Lemos (PSD) are technically tied in voting intention for the Rio Grande do Sul Senate, with 28% and 25%, respectively. Next, Hamilton Mourão (Republicanos) ties with Ana Amélia, with 19%, within the margin of error of 3%.

Question: If the election for Senator for Rio Grande do Sul was today and the candidates were the same, who would you vote for?

Source: Ipec. Research registered in the Regional Electoral Court of Rio Grande do Sul under the protocol no. RS-04310/2022 and in the Superior Electoral Court under protocol no. BR00161/2022.

The other candidates total 8%, the blank or spiled votes are 6%, and those who do not know or did not answer totaled 14%. However, in the spontaneous voting intention, when the names of the candidates are not presented, the number of voters who answered that they do not know or simply did not answer is 55%.

On Twitter, the clash changes faces. Ana Amélia leaves the dispute and has almost no interactions on the platform. Olívio and Mourão split the discussion. Analyzing 12 thousand posts between September 19 and 22, through the Trendsmap social network monitoring software, it can be seen that the hashtags #oliviosenador131 (Olívio Senator 131) and #vote100 are fighting for the position of most mentioned. The PT candidate is the most quoted in the period, in about 20% of the tweets.

Visualization of clusters in graph generated by Gephi software.

Olívio appears next to the candidacies of Edegar Pretto and Lula, but without depending on them to remain in the limelight. Mourão, on the other hand, is mostly linked to Bolsonaro’s campaign, of whom he is currently vice-president. Bolsonaro appears in 11% of the tweets that talk about Rio Grande do Sul Senate race, while Mourão is in 5%. The user who got the most interactions in the left-wing camp was candidate Olívio Dutra, but for Mourão’s side, the one who stands out is the pro-Bolsonaro influencer and businessman Leandro Ruschel.

Users from five cities in the state of Rio Grande do Sul are more active (see below), in Porto Alegre (38%), Rio Grande (13%), Pelotas (5%), Caxias do Sul (3%), and Santa Maria (3%).

For Paulo Peres, political scientist and professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, elections for executive positions, such as president and governor, mobilize more voters to take a position during the campaign. The large number of candidacies of state and federal deputies is obscured and only a few have greater visibility.

“That has been a pattern since always. In the case of the Senate, although there are fewer candidates, there is also not much room. That is, the centrality of the contests for governor and for president makes the other contests less evident”, explains the researcher.

For the congressmen, there is, besides the competition between parties, there is the contest within each party. “When the party quotient establishes how many seats the party has won, which was obtained with everyone’s vote, only the most individually voted will occupy the seats. All of this encourages the candidates for congressmen to seek greater evidence in any way they can, on social networks, posters, pamphlets, etc.,” he says.

For the Senate, there are few candidates and, at the moment, only one seat and fewer parties competing. “Perhaps they have not yet realized, at least in the case of RS, the relevance of networks today. Usually, they are older candidates, i.e., without much connection to the digital world”.

The Digital Democracy Room at FGV ECMI is an initiative to monitor and analyze the public debate on the internet. Currently, it has partnerships to help monitor politics on the networks in Brazil and in Latin America. This content was produced by the partner Sul 21.