Number of voters abroad grows, but abstention is a point of attention

The Brazilian election will be held around the world this Sunday (2). Abroad, 697,000 expatriates registered to vote abroad will be able to nominate their favorite for the presidency alone.

The number represents an increase of 39% compared to what it was four years ago. In all, 989 electronic voting machines were sent to 159 cities in 98 countries — in addition to 29 canvas voting machines. Ankara, for example, despite having only 58 Brazilians registered to vote, was one of them.

The Turkish capital had a very tight result in the second round of 2018, with Jair Bolsonaro taking 53% of the votes and Fernando Haddad, 47%. But the vote was not very expressive, with a quorum of only 15 voters. In absolute numbers, Bolsonaro won 8-7 — four years ago, there were fewer Brazilians eligible to vote, 40 in total.

The countries with the largest number of Brazilian voters are the United States, Portugal, Japan, Italy and Germany.

The election abroad, in any case, is very little relevant in the overall picture. Considering that 115.7 million Brazilians voted in Brazil in the second round of 2018, the 206 thousand votes from the diaspora represented only 0.18% of this universe.

And, as seen in the case of Ankara, abstention is often high. Of the 500,000 expats who could vote in 2018, only 41% did so — 295,000 (59%) preferred to do something else on the day. One of the reasons for this is that Brazilians do not always live where ballot boxes are taken, making access to polling places difficult.

Another thing to consider this year is that there is a decrease in the number of cities. Generally, Brazilian capitals or consulate offices receive the ballot boxes; otherwise, they were sent to 21 locations with large electoral colleges. But in total, there will be 159 cities in the world, against 171 that sent votes in 2018. Italy, for example, lost Florence and Venice.

In Spain, there will be polls in Madrid and Barcelona. “We have around 20,000 voters in Madrid, but the abstention rate is usually more than 50%,” says Deputy Consul of Brazil Roberto Arraes. He hopes the election will go smoothly. “There was no confusion in 2018 and we have no news of movement in that direction. We are betting that it will be smooth.”

In Portugal, on the other hand, leftist groups fear aggression near polling places. Lisbon this year became the city with the largest number of Brazilian voters outside Brazil: 45,200, more than double the number recorded in the last presidential election.

Looking at the 2018 data in Europe, curious data appears. Of the approximately 65,000 votes on the continent, 55.5% went to Bolsonaro, a similar percentage seen in Brazil (55.13%).

Ankara wasn’t even the city with the fewest voters four years ago; the cup belongs to Zagreb, capital of Croatia, with its 13 votes. There, Bolsonaro won 8-5, with 62% of the total. From lowest to highest: 62% was also the percentage the president won in Europe’s then-largest electoral college, London. Of the 8,495 votes cast, 5,227 went to him.

In Paris, however, things were different — in the French capital, by the way, the Consulate General of Brazil had to rent a new space, in the 9th district, to receive all Brazilian voters, who will also come from other cities in the country.

In 2018, Haddad did better, with 70% and 2,953 votes, against 1,299 for the competitor. The French capital, by the way, is definitely a point out of the curve. If it were for the Brazilians who live there, Bolsonaro would not even have made it to the second round. In the first round, the winner was Ciro Gomes (PDT), with 1,394 votes (31%), followed by Haddad, with 1,555 (25.8%), and Bolsonaro, 1,127 (25.2%).

But as it is not Paris who chooses the president of Brazil, this was of no avail. Perhaps it is the reason, however, that Ciro likes Paris. There, he was already the first.