Brazilian presidential election 2022 begins to attract attention from internet users

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Eight months before another electoral campaign in Brazil, a survey by Belo Investment Research reveals that the search and use of the word “election” are growing among internet users and politicians on various online platforms.

From September 2021 to January this year, there was a 37.5% increase in Internet users who searched for the word “election” on Google. The study is done according to the Online Interest Index that measures how many times the word was searched.

Compared to searches for other words, the research reveals that “election” is not yet a focus of Brazilians. For example, from June to December of last year, there was a 50.9% increase in the search for the word “inflation”, according to a survey by Belo Investment Research.

Another metric taken into account for the research was the Media Mention Index; that is, the use of the word “election” in Brazilian online communication channels grew 112.3% from September to December 2021, compared to the increase of 52.2% of the use of the word “inflation”.

However, in January 2022, there was a 69.5% drop in the number of reports mentioning the elections compared to September. The explanation for this is that from December 22 until February 1 was the period of parliamentary recess.

For this same reason, the survey of the Political Discourse Index, that is, how many times the word “election” was mentioned in Congress, was carried out between September and December 2021.

The study showed a growth of 36.3% in the word “election” among politicians in the last four months of last year. Politicians’ use of “inflation” grew by 35.6% over the same period.

The survey carried out by Belo Investment Research is based on Natural Language Processing (NLP), a branch of artificial intelligence that helps computers understand, interpret and manipulate human language. In short, it allows for the transforming of human language as it is spoken and written into data.

The director of Strategy at the research company, Rafael Foscarini, explains that the trend predicts the search and use of the word “election” to grow throughout the year, especially as the election scheduled for October 2 grows closer.

That is when Brazilians go to the polls to elect the President of the Republic, governors, senators, and federal, state, and district deputies. Any second round will be held on October 30.

“A month ago, we surveyed the search for the word “inflation”. The study showed a growth of over 50% in searches for this term. Our analysis now shows that this year’s electoral process is attracting the attention of Brazilians, but it is not the focus for now.

Interest should increase further from April, when the President of the Republic, governors, and mayors, who intend to run for other positions in 2022, must resign from their respective mandates and disclose the coalitions.

We will redo the survey in August”, concludes the director of Strategy at Belo Investment Research

Belo Investment Research is an independent research company that combines traditional and alternative data to analyze market trends since 2016.