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Lucas Pavanato and Eduarda Campopiano — the two young future PL parliamentarians who received the most votes in the State of São Paulo for the Chamber of Deputies, in Brasília, and for the São Paulo Legislative Assembly (Alesp), respectively — share the same type of main voter: men with average education between 35 and 59 years old.
This was the profile of Brazilians who most tended to vote, proportionally, for both candidates in the election on the first Sunday of October (4/10), according to an analysis by political scientist Jairo Pimentel, director of the Quanti.Lab consultancy and professor at the São Paulo School of Sociology and Politics Foundation (FESP-SP).
"In other words, it is the profile that we see in other research as the 'core' of Bolsonarism", he notes.
In partnership with the BBC News Brasil report, consolidated data from just over 103,500 polling stations in São Paulo were cross-referenced with the prior registration of the electorate of each of them.
This statistical method, called ecological inference, allows us to observe how much the demographic variables (gender, education, age, etc.) of the sections affect the electoral performance of candidates — in this case, for federal and state legislatures.
The analysis showed, for example, that, in sections where the number of female voters is greater than the number of male voters, Pavanato and Campopiano had relatively below-average votes.
"This reveals some patterns of behavior among the electorate", explains Pimentel. "It's important evidence about how these profiles vote."
Political scientist Lucas Gelape, from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) and who developed his research at Harvard University, in the United States, corroborates this, adding the fact that the behavior of voters in proportional elections — for legislative seats — is usually less understood than in majority races — for state governments and the Presidency, for example.
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"Not even the deputies have data like this", he reveals.
"What they have is just an intuition about the profile of the average electorate, and it is from this that they produce their political responses."
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Pimentel's study analyzed the votes of the ten best-voted future federal deputies in the State, as well as the ten best-performing candidates for the São Paulo Legislative Assembly.
In the case of the Chamber, the then councilor in the city of São Paulo, Lucas Pavanato, had the second best performance in the history of elections to the House, totaling 3.03 million votes (12.82% of the total available).
He was only behind Nikolas Ferreira (PL), elected in Minas Gerais by around 3.11 million voters.
Pavanato was contacted by email, but did not respond to the report's requests.
"The main point is that demographic variables are no longer as determinant of voting in Brazil", says the political scientist.
"The polarization of the country is so strong that, in fact, what defines most of the voters' choice is the ideological spectrum in which they are located. In other words, you don't vote for someone because he or she is a woman or a man. What matters more is whether the person is a Lulista or a Bolsonarist."
It's the same impression as Gelape, who has seen, for some elections now, an explosion of votes for individuals whose appeal at the polls is only ideological, whether to the left or the right.
"The politician's territorial relationship, which was common in the past, is no longer definitive for electoral success today. That is over."
This is how Pimentel sees how the variations in data crossing point to a relevant trend: that this average profile — male, with completed high school and between 35 and 59 years old — is more inclined to vote for right-wing candidates, such as Pavanato and Campopiano.
In the opposite direction, young people between 16 and 24 years old and women tend more to the left. "Looking at the votes for Erika Hilton, Tabata Amaral or Sâmia Bomfim, this becomes more evident. In the sections where there were more women, in percentage, they did slightly better."
The most voted
In addition to Lucas Pavanato, the list of the first ten federal deputies for São Paulo was made up of already parliamentarian Erika Hilton (PSOL), with 1.59 million votes (6.73% of the total), by Sâmia Bomfim (PSOL), with 2.46%, in addition to Kim Kataguiri (Missão), who had 2.19%, Tabata Amaral, from PSB (2.01% of the votes) and the brother of former president Jair Bolsonaro, Renato Bolsonaro (PL), with 1.60%.
Sergeant Nantes (PP), with 1.41%, Delegado Palumbo (Podemos), who added 1.28%, Guilherme Cortez (PSOL), with 1.16%, and Maurício Neves (PP), who got 1.14% of the electorate, completed the list.
At the state level, Campopiano was the big surprise: only the seventh most voted councilor in the municipal election in Praia Grande, a city in Baixada Santista, in 2024, with 2.17% of the local electorate, she almost surpassed the mark of 2 million votes in the dispute for a seat in the Legislative Assembly now.
It took 8.39% of all available votes in the State.
In addition to her, the list was completed by former federal deputy Eduardo Suplicy (PT), with 2.81% of the choices, three PSOL candidates — Sofia Favero, with 1.75%, Carlos Giannazi, with 1.58% and Paula Nunes, from the "feminist bench", with 1.40% —, Giovanni Sanchez (PL), who had 1.01% of the votes, Rogério Lins (Podemos), adding 0.99%, Tenente Coimbra (PL), with 0.85%, Rafa Minato (Missão), with 0.80% and, finally, Danilo Joan (PP), with 0.78%.
"My impression is that the candidates with the most votes have been receiving more and more votes throughout the elections. That is, they are expanding their margins, already large, of votes", observes Gelape, from UFMG, reinforcing the records of Pavanato, Nikolas and Eduarda in this election, but also of Erika Hilton — who came close to surpassing the best mark so far: Eduardo Bolsonaro's (PL-SP) 1.8 million votes in 2018.
"They explode with votes because they associate themselves with ideological agendas. These names in São Paulo are a demonstration of this. They are not professional politicians."
Credit, Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters
Campopiano male electorate
Although the numbers do not show a striking difference in votes for Eduarda Campopiano between male and female voters, they indicate that, somehow, the future PL state deputy managed to attract male voters more intensely.
For experts interviewed by BBC News Brasil, this is justified, first of all, by the robustness of her anti-feminist speech.
"Her campaign not only adhered to the agendas of the male extreme right, but was also built alongside male figures", explains sociologist Christina Vital, professor at the Postgraduate Program in Sociology at Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF).
She, who has just released the book Women and extreme right in Brazil (Elefante, 2026), alongside anthropologist Jaqueline Teixeira, from the Faculty of Public Health of the University of São Paulo (USP), refers mainly to Lucas Pavanato, the future PL federal deputy whose campaign was run practically alongside Campopiano.
Not surprisingly, both shared the same electorate profile at the polls, according to Pimentel's analysis. "They shared the same profile strategically."
But for Vital, her female support base cannot be ignored either. "Most conservative women in politics have their support bases among women. They make a career defending public policies aimed at women, families and children."
On her Instagram profile, where she has 3.2 million followers, Campopiano rightly classifies herself as "the biggest enemy of feminists in SP", while her videos reinforce topics ranging from the criminalization of abortion to the legality of female voting, including discussions of all types about gender equality.
In one of the cuts that had the most impact on the networks after her election — from an interview she gave in 2024 —, Campopiano states that "there are no 'types of masculinity'. There is masculinity or the lack thereof."
In the same conversation, she said that "a man who doesn't know how to be aggressive when he needs to is not a great example of a man."
On her page at the Praia Grande Chamber, she says that "her motto" is the Bolsonarist "God, country, family and freedom", and calls herself a "supporter of conservatism". When contacted by the report, she did not respond to interview requests.
BBC News Brasil discovered, shortly after the election results, that some projects it presented in the city's parliament were copied from other documents produced in different municipalities.
From a geographic point of view, she concentrated a large part of her votes in the regions of Campinas and São João da Boa Vista, close to the border with Minas Gerais. He won in cities such as Itatiba (18% of the votes), São João da Boa Vista (17.6%) and Amparo (16.1%), in addition to Campinas itself (12.2%) and its Praia Grande (19.2%).
The experts interviewed by the report also point out that the increasingly totalizing force of social networks as an electoral strategy is becoming an unequivocal electoral asset for results of this magnitude at the polls.
A report by the Instituto Democracia em Xeque in partnership with the Center for Research in Political Psychology and Social Movements (NUPMOS-PUC) and with support from the Heinrich Böll Brasil Foundation, showed that, among the ten young candidates who received the most resources for the 2026 campaign, only two were actually elected: Amanda Gentil (PP-MA), who reached R$3.2 million in revenue, and Ana Júlia (PT-PR), which had R$3 million. Both will be in the Chamber of Deputies, in Brasília, starting next year.
On the contrary, a study carried out by the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo showed that 80% of the one hundred most influential politicians — in terms of number of followers — on Instagram were elected, in this election, to both majority and proportional positions.
In other words, having more access to resources does not necessarily mean having better performance at the polls.
"[Campopiano] is recognized for its inflammatory nature, typical of communication on social media", notes Vital, from UFF. "She draws people's attention by defending agendas that make women vulnerable and that affirm male domination."
"But the theme of feminism, as a whole, mobilized a part of the electorate", adds Lucas Gelape, from UFMG. He strengthens the argument by the fact that, on the opposite side of the future state deputy, candidacies on the left were also raised based on this narrative, such as that of Erika Hilton (PSOL), for example.
In fact, while Campopiano had a slightly worse electoral performance in precincts with a greater female presence, Hilton, in contrast, increased her vote by 0.14 points, on average, in these same polls.
The phenomenon that was timidly repeated with names such as deputies Tabata Amaral and Sãmia Bomfim, at the federal level, and with Paula Nunes, at the state level.
For Christina Vital, the structural explanation lies in Brazilian inequality, although it exists beyond it. "With so many social, regional, religious and educational differences, it is to be expected that very different candidacies, even surprising for some Brazilians, will be successful [at the polls]."
Liberal generation frustrated with PTism
If women's voting trends are more evident, crossing voting behavior by age reveals different patterns of candidate choice: on the one hand, in sections with a greater presence of people between 16 and 34 years old, Pavanato and Campopiano were slightly worse, with average drops of 0.31 and 0.19 points, each.
On the contrary, these ballot boxes tended to include more votes for Erika Hilton (0.53 points) and, to a lesser extent, for federal deputy Kim Kataguiri (0.09 points).
On the other hand, Hilton was the most affected in the sections where voters between 35 and 59 years old are a majority. Their average performance was 0.22 points lower in these cases, while Pavanato and Campopiano, in turn, gained 0.28 and 0.20 points, respectively.
In the definition for the Legislative Assembly, younger people increased the performance of psychologist Sofia Favero, from PSOL, by 0.20 points, in the sections where they had a more robust presence, for example.
She received more votes from this profile than both right-wing candidates, such as Tenente Coimbra, and party colleagues, such as Carlos Giannazi.
For experts, all this data indicates an evident trend of varying voter behavior, depending on age groups.
Jairo Pimentel, from Quanti.Lab, observes that the group between 35 and 59 years old — which crosses two "generations" of consumption logic, the millennials and generation
If, on the one hand, they had easier access to higher education — many, in fact, thanks to the university social programs created by the PT governments —, on the other hand, they entered the job market when the country was beginning to enter into crisis. In other words: they imagined that they would rise socially through school inclusion.
"It's the combination of liberalism and frustration with left-wing governments. It inevitably leads to Bolsonarism", says Pimentel.
"These people are very sensitive to the idea of free markets, lower taxes, entrepreneurship, especially because they tend to distrust the State. As they studied more than their parents, they believe that self-effort is the way to improve their lives."
But, beyond global horizons, this profile also became more integrated into the country's political life, especially through social networks, after the rise of Bolsonarism in Brazil.
Philosopher and political scientist Marcos Nobre, professor at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp), for example, states that they play a leading role, in a certain way, in what he calls the "bolsonarian digital party".
"Bolsonarism, as a political identification, reaches around 25% of the population. Many people mobilize around the agenda of this 'identity' because they come across, on a YouTube live, in a WhatsApp group, their political organization, which is this party."
Between social programs and low wages
When considering the level of education, the ecological inference of proportional votes in São Paulo becomes even more evident: the lower level of formal education tended to give fewer votes to candidates on the right — especially for Lucas Pavanato, who lost 0.92 percentage points, on average, in sections where this profile (people with complete primary education) was stronger.
Eduarda Campopiano, in the same way, was not much better in these polls: he fell 0.62 points. "It's a profile of the electorate that contrasts impressively with the highest levels of education", admits Lucas Gelape. “We even need to understand this better.”
In fact, the data is reversed in the graphs of the behavior of voters with completed secondary education: votes increase significantly for Pavanato (0.52 points, on average) and for Campopiano (0.35), as well as for other names on the right — such as Sergeant Nantes (0.11), for example, from the Republicans.
For analysts, when crossing other variables, it becomes even easier to understand the phenomenon. One of them, the age group itself.
"A good part of voters with low education are older. They are people over 60 who did not study, but who experienced complicated phases in the country, with poor economic performance or the period of the military regime itself, for example. They vote for Lula, certainly", suggests Pimentel.
"Lula has the majority of votes from those who earn up to two minimum wages", continues historian Luiz Felipe de Alencastro, professor at the prestigious Sorbonne University, in Paris, France, for two decades, and president of the Arns Commission, in São Paulo, since June.
"This is a constant. It has a majority among people of African descent, in the poorest regions of the Northeast, and it also maintains a worker base in São Paulo — in Baixada Santista and in ABC."
Those who have completed high school are also in limbo, experts say: on the one hand, they do not depend as much on government social programs, such as Bolsa Família, since they have an average monthly income higher than the minimum established to receive the benefit (families whose per capita income is less than R$218), but, on the other, they are unable to access the well-paid jobs they desire.
“Then they saw the public that votes most for Bolsonarism today”, concludes Pimentel.
The problem, notes Gelape, is that this group is more susceptible to rising costs of living. In 2025, low-middle income households, in the classification of the Institute for Applied Economic Research (Ipea), that is, those whose monthly budget varies between R$3,300 and R$5,500, dealt with price inflation of 4.29%.
For low-income families (between R$2,200 and R$3,300), this increase was 4%.
However, for the UFMG political scientist, what really draws attention is how, as education increases, the left follows this pace, disputing the very meaning of what it means to be left-wing.
In sections where the electorate with higher education stands out in some way, names like Sâmia Bomfim (0.39), Tabata Amaral (0.32), at the federal level, and Paula Nunes (0.21), at the state level, grow.
"In other words, if you have higher education and live in São Paulo, there is a small group of candidates who can win your vote. There is no dispersion. Voting tends to concentrate on those names that were, in fact, elected."
Pimentel partly disagrees. "At this level, there are voters on both the right and the left, and they vote much more for ideological reasons than pragmatic ones. It is the political position that is at stake."
In his reading, it is another way of perceiving the very structure of voting in Brazil in 2026, in which the choice of candidates is no longer based on the electoral base or territory, but above all on opinion.
If until the 2018 election, the country's most voted parliamentarians were those who managed to promise — and deliver — certain benefits to their local audiences, such as mayors of small and medium-sized cities in the interior who then ran for the Chamber, for example, today the fight is all centered on pulling the electorate to some side of the polarization. “A pragmatic deputy is unlikely to be elected now,” says Pimentel.
"Renato Bolsonaro's election proves this", he concludes, remembering Jair Bolsonaro's brother who, at 62 years old, will take on the first elected position of his life in 2027: federal deputy for São Paulo for the PL.
He received more than 360 thousand votes.
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