In 2018, just four years ago, Lisbon was the 7th largest Brazilian electoral college abroad. Today is the biggest. This text, a brief anatomy of the current diaspora in Portugal, is based on one of the most relevant measures that define integration and belonging: democratic participation.
To understand better, let’s look at the macro scenario. The total number of Brazilian voters outside the country reaches almost 700,000 (697,078), spread across 181 cities around the world – the highest number ever.
Only 30 Brazilian municipalities have more voters than the whole of the diaspora and, among them, only Guarulhos and Campinas are not state capitals. In eight years, since Dilma Rousseff’s re-election, the number of voters in exile has exactly doubled. Today, if all Brazilian immigrants came together in one city, it would be bigger than Campo Grande, Maceió, Natal, João Pessoa, Teresina or… Lisbon.
Landing in Portugal, we learned that, according to the calculations of the Superior Electoral Court, more than 80,000 voters are able to press the button on the electronic voting machines that, from the time of “breakfast” —as the Portuguese call breakfast— wait for the vote of those who live in the country of Camões.
This new Portuguese reality could even be treated as a distant, abstract and romantic fact, but today it has substantive relevance. The number of people registered to vote in Portugal is also the highest ever. More voters live there than 80% of the municipalities in the country.
Another novelty is geographic dispersion. They now spread across the country. There may be only three electoral municipalities, but there are ten polling places. The biggest is Lisbon. Its 45,273 registered – the largest “electoral” municipality abroad – vote with eight zones spread across as many cities.
In Lisbon, at the Faculty of Law (36,966); in Setúbal (5,037), on the left bank of the Tagus, a bridge from the Belém Cultural Center and Chiado. In central Portugal, less than an hour away from the capital, they vote for Leiria (1,565) —a community that continues to grow— and for Santarém (863), in the agricultural region of the Ribatejo Lezíria.
But there are also voters in the depopulated interior, close to the border with Spain, in the aging cities of Castelo Branco (518), capital of Beira Baixa, and in Portalegre (123), in Alto Alentejo; and also in the island cities, Funchal (56), on the island of Madeira, and in Ponta Delgada (145), on the Azorean island of São Miguel.
To the north, the undefeated city of Porto today welcomes 30,098 voters —15,000 more than four years ago— and Faro, capital of the Algarve, is believed to be 5,525.
Sunday, October 2, 2022. The Portuguese numbers are impressive. Compared to 2018, the total number of Brazilian voters increased by 113% in Lisbon, 110% in Porto and 52% in Faro. Two hundred years after Independence, and in an election as disputed as this one, how decisive can the 80,866 “Portuguese” votes really be?
With a wealth of experience honed over 4+ years in journalism, I bring a seasoned voice to the world of news. Currently, I work as a freelance writer and editor, always seeking new opportunities to tell compelling stories in the field of world news.
