Don’t forget about Brazil’s state races

São Paulo will be one of Brazil's tightest state races

With Brazil’s general elections only a week away and the polarization around the presidential race becoming more and more intense each day, it can be easy for voters to forget that there are also state governorships up for grabs. State races are usually heated and widely discussed, but have been punted out of bounds by the press this time around, with all the focus on Jair Bolsonaro versus Fernando Haddad.

Recent opinion polls from renowned institutes Ibope and Datafolha have mapped the current field of play around Brazil’s 27 states, and have shown that a significant number of gubernatorial races are relatively clear-cut already. Eleven candidates are due to win in the first round of voting, that is, when they receive over 50 percent of valid votes in next week’s polls – six of these are incumbents. However, beyond these six, there are only four other sitting governors with realistic chances of re-election, the remaining 17 states will almost definitely see a change of leadership.

Here at The Brazilian Report, we have broken down the polling situations in the country’s nine most important states, according to Ibope and Datafolha data, released this week.

A tough election for sitting governors

Re-election for Executive posts was introduced in Brazil in 1998. Since then, 70 percent of sitting governors who ran for a second term won four more years. This time around, though, things are more complicated. Only half of sitting governors are leading the polls – and 9 of them risk not even reaching the runoff stage.

Each administration faces its own challenges but, in broad strokes, three factors are decisive: corruption scandals, a financial crisis that hampers investments, and a lack of charismatic allies on the federal stage to galvanize supporters. Re-election rates this time around will be much lower than usual.