The car in which a candidate for Rio de Janeiro councilor was traveling was riddled with bullets this Thursday (3) night. Because she was in an armored vehicle, she managed to survive the attack.
In São Paulo, a candidate for the capital’s City Council had her car hit by 11 shots. She was not in the vehicle at the time of the attack, but felt ill and was taken to the hospital.
In Sumaré, in the interior of São Paulo, two men shot the campaign coordinator of a mayoral candidate.
The three cases, which occurred from yesterday to today (4), are a sample of the violence that marks this year’s municipal election, which already records a number of cases like these that are more than double compared to past elections.
The impression that violence this time is greater than in previous elections is confirmed by the 3rd edition of the survey “Political and Electoral Violence in Brazil”, carried out by the organizations Terra de Direito e Justiça Global, released yesterday (3).
The report reveals that the increase in cases of violence in 2024 is 130% higher than in the 2020 elections. If today 1.5 daily cases of political violence are recorded across the country, in 2020 the result was one occurrence every seven days.
According to data from the report, at the beginning of the electoral campaign, 1.5 cases of electoral violence were recorded. During this year’s pre-campaign period, there were 145 incidents, such as murders, threats, attacks and other types of violence. In the pre-election period of 2020, 63 cases were officially recorded, including 14 murders, 15 attacks and ten threats.
The coordinator of Terra de Direito, Gisele Barbieri, said that “since the first edition of the survey it has been possible to identify that in election years there is an increase in political violence. In the registered cases we see a naturalization of political violence, considering the high rates of murders, attacks and threats”
According to the coordinator, “the research also identifies that violence affects parties from different political spectrums and affects women disproportionately”.
After the first round of elections this Sunday (6), the data in the report must be updated and published. If the current occurrences continue, the situation should further increase the level of electoral violence in the country.
Highlights of violence
With the aim of analyzing the political-electoral context, based on monitoring how political violence has permeated the disputes at each election, interfering in the democratic process, the historical series reveals that, from January 1, 2016, to August 15, 2024, 1,168 cases were identified in Brazil. The number already includes data from the new edition, which analyzes types of occurrence, profile of victims, cases by region and also by color and race.
