Two years late and short on staff, Brazil’s census faces even more problems

In the aftermath of Brazil’s first round of general elections on Sunday, major polling institutes were lambasted for vastly underestimating the support of incumbent far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who managed to force the presidential race to a runoff on October 30. But pollsters have been up against it this year, being unable to rely on outdated official statistics to carry out accurate sampling — in fact, the country has not carried out a national census for 12 years.

On August 1, the Brazilian Geography and Statistics Institute (IBGE) finally got underway collecting data for the country’s census, delayed for two years due to the pandemic and severe budget constraints. Over two months later, the survey is far from complete, with myriad new problems arising along the way.

At a press conference on Monday, the survey’s technical manager Luciano Duarte announced that roughly 104.4 million people in more than 36.5 million households had been interviewed — a vast number, but still only 49 percent of the population.

Ideally held every ten years, Brazil’s census is pivotal for public policymaking, especially on a municipal level. It forms the basis of the government’s decisions on matters such as school funding, vaccine policies, and electoral districting — but Brazil is still using data from 2010. 

During the last census, 86.5 percent of the population had been interviewed within two months. IBGE’s research officer Cimar Azeredo said that data collection is likely to run until the beginning of December, delivering the results at the end of the year. Initially, the first step of this process was set to be completed by this...