President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was reelected on October 29 for another four-year term with more than 20 million votes ahead of the PSDB-PFL neoliberal coalition candidate, Geraldo Alckmin. Lula obtained 60.8% of all valid votes, while the PSDB candidate, the toucan, received 39.2%.


Lula is reelected with 58 million votes
Second round strategy
Programmatic polarization
The “no” to the right
The intellectuals and Lula’s campaign
The PT in the states
The role of the press and the “coup of the elites”
Composition of the new Federal Chamber of Deputies
Partisan and ideological composition of the Chamber

Lula is reelected with 58 million votes

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was reelected on October 29 for another four-year term with more than 20 million votes ahead of the PSDB-PFL neoliberal coalition candidate, Geraldo Alckmin. Lula obtained 60.8% of all valid votes, while the PSDB candidate, the toucan, received 39.2%.

With the impressive mark of 58,295,042 votes, Lula outperformed his 2002 electoral result, when he obtained 52,793,364. The result of the runoff election also represented a dramatic growth in relation to the first round, when Lula had 46,662,365 votes, that is, 48.61% of valid votes. Alckmin lost about 2.4 million votes from the first to the second round.

The growth of his candidacy in the states was so relevant that Lula reversed the situation in Acre, Rondônia, Goiás and the Federal District, all states in which he had lost in the first round. The petista also improved his performance in some states up in the Northern region in which his voting had already been good, as in Amazonas, Maranhão and Pará, also in the Southeast, as in Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro, and in the Northeast too, as was the case in Bahia.

In the states of the South and Southeast, constituencies in which Alckmin had had the most votes in the first round, Lula almost tied in Paraná, where 50.75% preferred Alckmin against Lula’s 49.25%. The Workers Party candidate also drastically reduced Alckmin’s edge in the state he governed for so long: the gap in São Paulo dropped from 3,835,935 votes to little over a million.

Contrary to the prognoses of the great majority of political analysts and columnists working for the country’s big newspapers, the Workers Party had a good performance in this election and will as of 2007 have more state governments than in 2002: Acre, Bahia, Pará, Piauí and Sergipe. Together, these five units of the federation concentrate 17.1 million voters, the equivalent to 13.5% of Brazil’s total.

It is a quantum leap in relation to what the party had won in the 2002 race, when it only elected the governors of Acre, Mato Grosso do Sul and Piauí (3.2% of the country’s electorate).

Second round strategy

With party leaders, campaigners, militants and supporters all optimistacally expecting Lula to win in the first round of the election, going to a second round had the bitter taste of defeat. The social-democratic candidate, in turn, was acclaimed as the great winner of the first round even though trailing behind Lula by a considerable number of votes.

Part of this sentiment was generated by the big media which, in the first round’s final lap, networked in favor of a second round.

The Workers Party campaign coordination’s concern on the day after the first round’s result was to define a strategy capable of ensuring the polarization of the campaigns, while simultaneously seeking to cheer up the militancy. Since the beginning of the campaign, a thesis started to be built, with the active engagement of the media, according to which Lula would inevitably be defeated in the second round and that, thereby, the election should be decided still in the first round. This provoked a certain wave of pessimism once the result of the polls was announced.

Yet Lula dashed ahead. The Lula campaign team was quick to negotiate support to contain potential adhesions to the Alckmin camp, while the toucan’s campaign, according to political analysts and his own coalition party members, as Rio de Janeiro’s mayor, César Maia, was not able to keep the pace it exhibited during the previous week.

Lula promptly met with the first-round victorious governors. In addition to the four petistas (Binho Marques, from Acre, Wellington Dias, from Piauí, Marcelo Déda, from Sergipe, and Jaques Wagner, from Bahia), Waldez Góes –reelected governor of Amapá by the PDT–, Marcelo Miranda –reelected in Tocantins by the PMDB– and Cid Gomes
–elected in Ceará by the PSB– appeared from the start pledging their support for Lula. Eduardo Braga (PMDB), who was reelected in Amazonas, the state where Lula obtained the highest proportional voting, sent his vice-governor to represent him.

The campaign coordination quickly negotiated alliances for the second round. With the PMDB, in Goiás, by supporting Maguito Vilela. In Rio de Janeiro, the support for Sérgio Cabral brought together the PT and the Brazilian Republican Party (PRB) of Vice-president José Alencar and of first-round defeated candidate Marcelo Crivella. An agreement was made in Pará with the PMDB to support the PT candidate, Ana Júlia Carepa. In Pernambuco, support for Eduardo Campos, of the PSB, was immediate. In Paraíba, the alliance with José Maranhão (PMDB) started in the first round, the same occurring in Rio Grande do Norte, where Lula’s ally is Wilma Farias, of the PSB. Even a phone call made by Lula to Germano Rigotto, governor of Rio Grande do Sul, was important to keep him from immediately declaring support for Alckmin in the second round.

In the Alckmin side, however, things didn’t go that well. He was unable to impose his agenda for the second round and it took him too long to agglutinate support, with the first public adhesion to his candidacy being that of former governor of Rio de Janeiro, Anthony Garotinho (PMDB). A support that further confirmed the division of the PMDB in Rio de Janeiro, since the party’s gubernatorial candidate, Sérgio Cabral, had declared support for Lula’s reelection.

Garotinho’s support for the Alckmin campaign was also responsible for a fissure in the PSDB-PFL alliance, given the fact PFL’s César Maia, mayor of Rio de Janeiro, is an adversary of the Garotinho couple. Maia, one of Alckmin’s top negotiators, threatened to withdraw his support for Alckmin, whom he accused of making an alliance with the worst in Brazilian politics. To the mayor, this closeness compromised the discourse in defense of ethics in politics which had, until that moment, been vocalized by the coalition of parties opposing the Lula candidacy.

This fact also prompted Judge Denise Frossard, of the Socialist Popular Party (PPS), while racing in the second round for the governorship of Rio de Janeiro, to campaign for the annulment of votes in the presidential election, after initially having announced her intention of withdrawing her support for Alckmin.

A backlash from his supporters in Rio de Janeiro cost Alckmin at least one week of the campaign trying to reverse the situation.

Programmatic polarization

Many other factors also contributed to boost the Lula candidacy such as the consolidation of the support for Lula in the popular sectors, which constitute the majority of the electorate; rejection against ex-president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, of the same party as Alckmin; and support from some of the country’s most important popular organizations, including the Single Central of Workers (CUT), the Students National Union (UNE) and the rural workers movements.

The campaign would then have a few obstacles to overcome. A rather important challenge for the campaign was establishing a dialog with sectors of the left, particularly with the leaders of the Freedom and Socialism Party (PSOL) and the Democratic Labour Party (PDT). Fending off the corporate media, which systematically campaigned against the Workers Party and Lula in the first round, and the attitude of the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) also constituted cause for concern within the “The strength of the people” coalition.

Unlike the first round, Lula campaigners defined that the strategy for the second round would focus on deepening the programmatic debate and confronting projects. The objective was to oppose the democratic and popular government to the neoliberal government represented by the social-democrats and, particularly, by the FHC era, marked by privatizations and minimal state.

In other words, it was about presenting Alckmin’s victory as the return of FHC, which also entailed electing a candidate associated with the extreme right and linked to the Opus Dei, who represented a setback for the accomplishments of those most impoverished sectors of the society. In sum, it was “people’s lives” that were at stake.

The campaign coordination reaffirmed the commitment that Lula’s second term of office would outweigh the first, with the guarantee that an economic policy centered on growth with income and wealth distribution will be implemented.

In parallel to this defense, the campaign coordination sought to deconstruct the Alckmin and PSDB administration in the state of São Paulo, over the 12 years of their tenure. The shelving of 69 Parliamentarian Inquest Commissions, barred in the State of São Paulo Legislative Assembly by the government’s allied parties, the high cost of the tolls on the state’s turnpikes, the growth of organized crime in the state and the privatizations were constantly brought to attention.

This last issue, the privatizations, certainly dictated the second round’s agenda. The contestant spent more than 20 days of his campaign attempting to prove that he would not privatize any state-owned company should he be elected.

The question of the privatizations opposed Lula and Alckmin throughout the second round. A poll by the Institute for Social, Political and Economic Research (IPESPE), published on October 26 by newspaper Valor Econômico, indicated that 70% of the electorate was against the privatization of large state-owned companies. Another 18% were in favor of the selling of state companies. Respondents gave their opinion on the privatization of three state-owned companies: the Bank of Brazil, Petrobrás and the Federal Savings Bank. Among the respondents interviewed, 49% linked Alckmin to the selling of state-owned companies, while 27% believed there was a connection between Lula and privatization.

Alckmin presided over the state of São Paulo’s privatization program office (PED) from 1996 to 2000. The PED coordinated the sale of Eletropaulo and of the Companhia Paulista de Força e Luz (CPFL), two energy utilities, in 1997; the transfer of the Paulista Railway (Fepasa) of the Banespa Bank to the Union in 1997 and the sale of Comgás, a gas utility, in 1999.

The Ipespe survey further found that 45% of the respondents assessed as bad the privatizations carried out during the previous administrations, including Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s terms. Only 33% approved of the selling of the state-owned companies.

The privatization agenda imposed on the Alckmin campaign even prompted his marketers to submit him to a, to say the least, quite embarrassing situation. The contestant had to pose for a photo session wearing a coat with the logos of the three companies: Caixa Econômica Federal, Banco do Brasil and Petrobras.

The Lula administration social programs also contributed to worsen Alckmin’s headache, just as the privatizations, with the contestant being forced into accepting Lula’s agenda and publicly admitting he would not discontinue the Workers Party social programs, especially the Family Grant.

According to a study by the Center for Social Policies of the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV), based on data provided by the Brazilian Statistics Office’s census (PNAD), the Family Grant program was one of the factors accounting for a 19.2% drop in poverty levels over Lula’s three years in government. This is the single most important reduction recorded ever since this kind of survey started being done in 1992.

This quite impressive fall, according to the survey coordinated by Marcelo Néri, head of the FGV Center for Social Policies, was also due to a growth in employment and income, to an increase in social security spending and to the minimum wage raises.

Poverty in Brazilian cities, which had risen 41% from 1996 to 2002, was reduced by 23.7%. In the rural area, poverty fell 12.6%. According to Néri, “contrary to [what had happened in] the previous years, the reduction in poverty in big cities was the main driver of the improvement in social indicators”.

Another factor that contributed to the success of the second round was Lula’s presence in the debates organized by the TV networks. After personally acknowledging his fault for not having attended the first-round debates, the petista candidate attended all of them in the second round campaign.

In the first round Lula was pressured, especially by the media, to respond to the alleged purchase of a dossier against the PSDB candidacies. The episode, which is still being investigated by the Federal Police and the Attorney General, was exploited by the Alckmin campaign, with the concerted support of the corporate media.

On September 15, the Federal Police arrested Valdebran Padilha and Gedimar Passos in a São Paulo City downtown hotel. Padilha had been affiliated to the PT since 2004. Gedimar is a retired Federal Police officer. At the time of their arrest they were carrying about R$ 1.7 million (approx. USD 700,000), money that would allegedly be paid to Luiz Antônio Vedoin in exchange for a dossier hypothetically containing documents that compromised the José Serra and Barjas Negri offices as Ministers of Health in the FHC administration.

The media hid the content of the dossier and concentrated on accusing both the PT and the Lula administration of using reproachable campaign methods, as well as resorting to illicit financial resources.

The campaign orchestrated by the media and the opposition hinged on some extremely serious facts: Gedimar Passos was a Lula campaign staff, subordinated to Jorge Lorenzetti, the coordinator of the “risk analysis” department, who in turn reported to Ricardo Berzoini, PT’s national president and general-coordinator of the presidential campaign.

Gedimar Passos mentioned in his deposition before the Federal Police the name of Freud Godoy, one of the president’s aides, as being involved in the episode. The security system of the hotel where the Federal Police made the arrests recorded the presence of Hamilton Lacerda, the communications coordinator of the Workers Party gubernatorial candidate to the state of São Paulo, Aloizio Mercadante.

Other people involved in the case were Osvaldo Bargas, a former Ministry of Labour staff and former CUT labor confederation leader; and Expedito Veloso, a Bank of Brazil director.

After the first round, on October 6, the PT national executive board passed a resolution on the episode (for the full text, log on to www.pt.org.br), which, among other things, states the following:

“The party members involved in that negotiation did not consult with the PT board, did not consult with the campaign coordination and did not consult with the party’s candidates. Therefore, they have disrespected the basic norms of coexistence in a democratic party.

The PT National Executive [board] repudiates the attitude of those members, deems it a mistake to replace program competition with this type of practice, condemns the promiscuity with a group of criminals, as well as the complete disrespect for partisan democracy.

Members who have thus acted have, in practice, placed themselves outside the party. And by decision of the National Executive are politically expelled from the PT.”

In addition to the expulsion of those involved, Ricardo Berzoini requested a leave of absence from the party presidency “for the period of time necessary for the complete clarification of the facts that involved party members in the alleged purchase of the dossier”. (See Berzoini’s full press release at www.pt.org.br)

The “no” to the right

Yet the recomposition of Lula’s historical electoral base may, according to political analysts, be the most clarifying explanation to the electoral impact caused by the president’s advantage detected in the final polls. The campaign succeeded in spreading the arguments against voting in the contestant, and making it clear all his election could have meant, including from the point of view of relations with the other countries of Latin America, and the return of the subordination to the interests of the United States.

Two days after the first round ballot, the PSOL board considered the two most voted candidates as being identical, and “deliberated not to recommend voting either in Lula or in Alckmin”. In a rather exotic way, decreed the imposition: “Our resolution has a prohibitive character. Our members cannot publicly manifest [their opinions] on the second round”. And to wrap it up, the executive board once more equated the PT to the PSDB: “the PSOL has a definition: to recommend not voting in either candidate. Therefore, neither the PT nor the PSDB need to look us up because we already have a political position”.

Despite this resolution, various sectors of the PSOL, and even some of its leaders, declared publicly their positions in relation to the second round while simultaneously fighting within the party.

The PSOL candidate to the governorship of São Paulo, Plínio de Arruda Sampaio, recommended: “we, the socialists, whether we like it or not, will take part in this battle, for, in politics, omission does not mean neutrality. What should our objective be in the second clash? The second round is the very short term. Other battles will come and to face them in better conditions we need to deepen the dialog with other combative popular organizations”.

Some PSOL sectors, as the Socialist Popular Action (APS) group, sided with Representative Ivan Valente when he stated: “Not a single vote for Alckmin. And keep in the resistance against neoliberalism, whichever the new government is”. The APS understands that “in practice, there is no sign that any PSOL militant may come to vote in Alckmin”. Reflecting internal nuances, the APS concludes that “there is both the possibility of voting null or of a critical vote for Lula, but no vote in Alckmin”.

Sociologist Chico de Oliveira, a former PT member and presently affiliated to the PSOL, declared to the press that “campaigning for a null vote is a mistake”. To him, a future Alckmin administration would represent a deepening of the FHC privatizations. In Lula’s case, “albeit not expecting alterations in the economic policy, there is room for change”.

The PSTU declared support for the null vote and affirmed that this type of vote “not only indicates a lack of electoral alternatives for the workers in this second round”, but also that “a large number of null votes would weaken both candidacies and the future government-elect”.

The Brazilian Communist Party (PCB), in a note, recommended “a vote of criticism in Lula, unilaterally, independent, without engaging in the campaign”.

The PDT, presidential candidate Cristovam Buarque’s party, decided to stay independent and not to support any candidacy in the second round of the presidential elections. The party’s National Board, however, allowed its members “to vote according to their consciences”. At the PDT meeting, Cristovam argued in favor of supporting the Alckmin candidacy. Some days later, in spite of his party’s recommendation not to reveal his vote, the senator said “that he is afraid of a President Lula second term”.

Several PDT leaders publicly advocated support for Lula. Ex-representative Vivaldo Barbosa, a PDT board member, declared a vote in favor of the petista‘s reelection. The party’s national honorary vice-president, singer Beth Carvalho, said she would withdraw her affiliation to the party because she disagreed with the board.

The intellectuals and Lula’s campaign

The second round contest between the PT and the PSDB resulted in countless alignments and declarations of support by the whole of society, but especially by academia and intellectuals, who were called on to state their positions in face of the two projects. A quasi-totality of the declarations stemming from the universities were in support of Lula or, at least, against the PSDB candidate.

According to Carta Maior news agency, one of the first manifestos in favor of Lula to circulate in academic circles was bred in the Institute of Biophysics of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), and contained declarations of support by many people who had voted in Cristovam Buarque (PDT) or Heloísa Helena (PSOL) in the first round, besides others who were voting again in Lula. Elaborated by Professor Adalberto Vieyra, who is the institute’s director and an intellectual historically connected to Leonel Brizola and the PDT, the manifesto contains the signatures of “college professors, researchers, technical staff and professionals from different areas of the natural and social sciences, of applied sciences and mathematics, of technology, philosophy, languages and arts, we, who identify ourselves with the ideas of change forged in the resistance against the dictatorship and in the construction of democracy in this country”.

The manifesto repudiated the return to power of the PSDB political project: “At the very moment the second round is being waged, opposing the moderate reformist position represented by Lula’s reelection to the explicit neoliberalism of the opposition candidate, we understand it is our duty, as intellectuals and members of the academic, scientific and technologic community, to publicly declare our support for Lula’s reelection”, says the document. The UFRJ intellectuals underscored as a positive factor of the Lula administration the increased dialog with the social movements –“the arena has widened but we must move forward!”– and argue that “the foreign policy must be maintained in its broader lines”.

The manifesto, in addition to the support given to Lula, also suggested some course changes for the second term, such as the reduction of interest rates, an increase in infrastructure investments and changes in the Family Grant: “It was of fundamental importance that this government suspended the privatizations, which were corruption-infected. We also expect the new government to establish more stringent and transparent standards in controlling public administration so as to prevent ethical deviations involving government officials with political parties and members of Congress”, thus ends the manifesto, which includes, among others, the signatures of Luiz Pinguelli Rosa, of the COPPE, and of Eliane Brígida Falcão, of the Center for Health Sciences.

Another document, this one originated in the University of São Paulo, entitled “We say no to Geraldo Alckmin!”, managed to bring together, according to its organizers, intellectuals supporting the PSTU, PSOL, PT, PCB, PCdoB and PDT, from universities as UNB, Unicamp, Unesp, UFMG, UFPB, UFPR, UFSCar, UFF and PUC-SP, among others. The document declared that “Geraldo Alckmin in power will be the crowning of a right-wing setback which was made clear in his electoral speech, all of it based in bravados against taxes and public spending binges, pledges of reducing the size of the State, of infinite reformism of social security and hues of indignation against corruption (whose duct was initiated in his own party). With these proposals he will do nothing different from what a right-wing candidate would anywhere in the world”, reads the document, which carries the signatures of professors Marilena Chauí, Paul Singer, Maria Victoria Benevides, Venício Lima and Wolfgang Leo Maar, among others.

The PT in the states

The elections gave a new electoral contour to the map of Brazil. The PT, differently from the scenario foreseen by political analysts, rose from three to five governors: Acre, Bahia, Pará, Piauí and Sergipe.

The PT took everyone by surprise with the election in the first round of former minister Jaques Wagner to the governorship of Bahia. The party, by defeating the PFL candidate, Governor Paulo Souto, broke with the 16-year domination of the “carlismo” (designating the oligarchy established by Senator Antônio Carlos Magalhães) over the state’s government.

In the second round, the largest electoral college in the northern region elected Workers Party Júlia Carepa, who relinquished her term of office as a senator for the state and put and end to the PSDB hegemony, which has governed the state of Pará for 12 years. The petista defeated the government’s candidate, social-democrat Almir Gabriel, who was supported by the incumbent PSDB governor, Simão Jatene.

Among the allied parties, the PMDB made seven governors and the PSB, three.

In the case of the PSB, the wins had a different taste. The party was able to overcome the barrier clause by electing more than 5% of the federal deputies. In the first round it elected the governor of Ceará, Cid Gomes, imposing a defeat on the PSDB president, Tasso Jereissati. In the second round the party defeated the PFL in Pernambuco with Eduardo Campos; and elected the governor of Rio Grande do Norte, Wilma Faria, after a tough contest against the local oligarchies.

Lula begins the second term with a broad support in the states. Of the federation’s 27 units, 16 will have governors supported, in the first and/or second rounds, by Lula.

The main opposition parties, the PSDB and the PFL, elected, respectively, six and one governors, the latter that of the Federal District.

The PFL was the biggest loser in the state elections. The military dictatorship’s political heir, the PFL is now reduced to one governor. According to Leandro Fortes, of Carta Capital magazine, “the defeats of Paulo Souto, in Bahia, and Roseana Sarney, in Maranhão, won’t simply shake the pillars of the PFL in the national political scene. In both cases, the two most powerful, archaic and violent political oligarchies in the country were dethroned by the polls”.

Senators Antonio Carlos Magalhães and José Sarney were not able to reelect their political protégés even though they dominate practically all the means of communication in both states.

In Maranhão, the loss of Roseana Sarney, daughter of former president José Sarney, brings an end to 40 years of the Sarney family in power. Her candidacy also exposed the PT’s contradictions with regard to political alliances. Lula’s relations with Sarney’s national PMDB led the petista to publicly express his support for the PFL candidate, Roseana. At the state level, however, the PT backed Jackson Lago, the PDT candidate.

In the case of the PSDB, they lost in the important state of Pará, but succeeded in retaining the country’s two largest electoral colleges, São Paulo, with José Serra, and Minas Gerais, with the reelection of Aécio Neves, and winning the state of Rio Grande do Sul, with Yeda Crucius, in a fierce race with the PT. The PSDB will also govern the states of Paraíba, Alagoas and Roraima.

The role of the press and the “coup of the elites”

The greatest losers in this election were undoubtedly the country’s conservative elite and its main instrument of domination: the media.

The excellent article by journalist Altamiro Borges, Media is condemned in the polls; what now?, recalls that at the victory party on Sunday night a huge banner stretched across Paulista Avenue in São Paulo read: “The people defeated the media”. To Altamiro Borges, it expressed well the feelings of millions of Brazilians “before the depressing and abject coverage by the media of this political battle”.

According to the journalist, some activists took the opportunity to cry out “the people are not fools, down with the Globo network” (“o povo não é bobo, fora Rede Globo”), reminiscent of a refrain that became famous during the “direct [elections] now” campaign. On the stage, one of the speakers took it off his chest: “I would like to send a message to Veja magazine: you’ve lost the elections”. In small circles others sang “Ou, ou, ou, a Veja se ferrou” (a possible translation being “Veja got screwed”).

Indeed, says the journalist, “among those defeated in the second round, the hegemonic media was one of the most damaged in terms of reputation and credibility. With rare exceptions, the big papers, magazines, radio and TV stations took sides in this election. In a scandalous way, as was the case with Veja magazine and newspapers Folha de S. Paulo e O Estado de S. Paulo, or in a more surreptitious way as TV Globo, the bulk of the means of communication occupied their spaces to lynch the Lula administration and to present in a positive or “neutral” form the neoliberal opposition candidate, Geraldo Alckmin. In practice, they behaved as right-wing political parties, seeking to “define the political agenda” and unabashedly interfere in the result of the presidential succession”.

One of the main reasons for the PT’s victory in these presidential elections was that the majority of the Brazilian society did not get confused by the media and was able to perceive the two projects that were at stake.

But just a minor share of the electorate that voted Lula is organized in parties and social movements. Hence, one of the greatest challenges after the October 29 victory is to broaden (and qualify) the influence of trade unions, student entities, urban and rural workers movements, women and black organizations, and of all other forms of popular organization. For the same reason, leftist parties must take a more active role in the country’s day-to-day life. Thus the need to create direct communication channels with society.

One of the merits the election had was to bring to the center of the discussions the need for democratizing the country’s means of communication and for consolidating a democratic press as represented by Carta Capital, Caros Amigos, Brasil de Fato, Correio da Cidadania, Carta Maior and others.

Composition of the new Federal Chamber of Deputies

Despite the eminently popular nature of the election of Lula to the presidency, the first mappings of the composition of the new Chamber of Deputies show no modification in the socioeconomic profile of the future legislature, in that, regardless of a 48-percent renewal rate, the lower house did not change much from a partisan point of view in comparison with today, with the current correlation of forces practically unaltered.

Taking for reference the 2002 election, one of the main losers in this election was the PFL, which lost 19 representatives, falling from 84 to 65 deputies.

Almost every large and medium-sized party representation in the lower house had a reduction in its number of parliamentarians. The PSDB, which in this legislature was represented by 71 parliamentarians, will only have 66 in 2007; the Progressive Party (PP) lost 12 seats, falling from 53 to 41; the Brazilian Labour Party (PTB), went down from 26 to 23; and the Prona lost four seats, dropping from 6 to 2 representatives.

The PT, though shrinking from 91 deputies to 83, will still be the second largest party in the Chamber –quite close to the largest party, the PMDB, which has 89 deputies.

With regard to the socioeconomic profile, a survey conducted by newspaper Folha de São Paulo indicated that one third of the new Chamber of Deputies will be composed of millionaires. The study found that out of the 513 parliamentarians assuming their offices in 2007, 165 declared personal assets worth R$ 1 million (approx. USD 400 thousand) plus, 74 of said representatives being newcomers while 91 were reelected.

Another survey, released by the Parliamentarian Advisory Cross-Union Department (Diap), shows that 265 parliamentarians of the future legislature are professionals. The second largest representation in the Chamber is formed by entrepreneurs, with a total of 121, thus distributed: 97 urban, 83 of them factory owners, 11 retailers, and 3 industrialists, plus 24 farmers, in agribusiness, cattle and crop farming.

The third professional group is formed by urban salaried workers, including both private and public employees, totaling 87 deputies. The fourth group is composed of rural workers and urban factory workers, with a total of 19. The fifth and last group is of a distinct nature.

To political analysts, the ideological composition of the newly-elected Chamber, judging from their schooling level and source of income, tends to be more liberal than social democratic, which might increase the pressure for liberalizing reforms. A reduction in the size of the workers’ representation and a rise in the number of entrepreneurs and professionals in the Chamber, for example, might open room for renewed attempts to pass neoliberal-inspired labor legislation such as flexible work.

Check below the new partisan and ideological composition of the Chamber of Deputies

Partisan and ideological composition of the Chamber

Number of seats elected in 2006, current, and elected in 2002

Data provided by the Parliamentarian Advisory Department (Diap)