Brazil’s Senate: Bolsonaro’s party leads in the Southeast and Center-West

Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party (PL) has elected candidates to the Senate in all five regions of Brazil in the 2022 elections.

In all, eight representatives were victorious on Sunday (October 2, 2022), with two of them reelected: Romário (Rio de Janeiro) and Wellington Fagundes (Mato Grosso).

The result will make the acronym of President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) jump from 7 in the current legislature to 13 senators in 2023, with the new 6 names.

Here are the names of the six new PL senators:

• Magno Malta (Espírito Santo);
• Wilder Morais (Goiás);
• Rogério Marinho (Rio Grande do Norte);
• Jaime Bagatolli (Roraima);
• Jorge Seif (Santa Catarina);
• Marcos Pontes (São Paulo).

The balance is even more expressive when compared to the inauguration in 2019. At that time, there were only two congress members.

With this, the PL will have the largest bench in the Senate. The party also consolidates its leadership in the Southeast (6) and the Center-West (2), where it shares the top position with PSD, Progressistas, and União Brasil.

On the other hand, the PT (Workers’ Party) elected three more senators in the Northeast and assumed first place in the region as of 2023, with six representatives.

Formed from the merger of DEM and PSL in 2022, União Brasil won in three northern states: Acre, Amapá, and Tocantins.

The former president of the Senate, Davi Alcolumbre, was reappointed to the Upper House.

With six senators from the region after 2023, the party holds the leadership.

LOSSES

The MDB, in turn, will no longer have the largest bench in the Senate with the departure of three congress members – from 13 to 10.

Among them is Senator Rose de Freitas (MDB), who failed to be reelected by the state of Espírito Santo.

The center party lost its hegemony in the Northeast: it will go from 6 to 5 senators after the renewal of ⅓ of the Upper House.

The MDB will also lose representation in the Midwest due to the end of Simone Tebet’s mandate, who opted to run for the Presidency of the Republic in 2022.

In 2019, when the Senate started a new legislature, the MDB led in 3 of the 5 regions: there were 5 representatives from the North, 5 from the Northeast, and 2 from the Midwest.

The PSDB will have only São Paulo senator Mara Gabrilli in the Senate in 2023. In the previous term, it had three seats – two in São Paulo and one in Minas Gerais.

In 2020, the party lost one representative when Minas Gerais’ then-Senator, Antonio Anastasia, moved to the PSD.

In 2023, the acronym will no longer dominate the region with the end of the mandate of the toucan José Serra, who chose to run as a federal deputy. In his place will come Marcos Pontes (PL), elected in São Paulo.

Podemos had the largest number of senators in the South in 2019, with 3. During the 56th legislature, it grew to 4.

The exits of Alvaro Dias -defeated by Sergio Moro (União Brasil)- in Paraná and of Lasier Martins, who ran for federal deputy in Rio Grande do Sul, will make Podemos lose half of the representatives in the region and the hegemony.

REDUCTION

In 2023, there will be 15 political parties in the Senate. The number represents a shy drop compared to 2019 when there were 16 parties and renewal of ⅔ of the Upper House.

With information from Poder360