Political violence in Brazil's 2026 run-off changed target. Instead of candidates, the survey released on Wednesday by the rights organisations Terra de Direitos and Justiça Global found the ordinary voter: of the 379 episodes counted between 5 and 31 October, 350 (92.3%) hit voters, activists, campaign teams or party offices. Eighteen people were killed and 18 others had their lives threatened.
This is the fourth edition of the survey "Violência Política e Eleitoral no Brasil" (Political and Electoral Violence in Brazil). The period covers the run-off campaign and the first week after the election, and reaches 198 municipalities, all 27 federative units and cases abroad.
One case every two hours
The hourly count is the number that shows the scale of the jump. In the 2026 run-off there was one episode every two hours. In the 2022 run-off, which was two days longer, it was one every twelve — a rate six times lower, according to the outlet Brasil de Fato. In this year's first round, between 16 August and 4 October, the survey had recorded 134 episodes against candidacies or elected officials, roughly one every nine hours.
The reversal also shows up in the daily averages. Attacks on candidates fell from 2.68 a day in the first round to 1.07 in the run-off. Cases against voters and activists rose to almost 13 a day.
The violence concentrated in small towns. Municipalities of up to 50,000 inhabitants accounted for 61% of attacks with lethal intent and for 12 of the 18 deaths. In cities of more than 100,000, the share of such episodes was 4%.
Of the 242 cases classified as diffuse violence — those in which the target is the voter rather than the candidate — 225 (93%) hit supporters of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers' Party). The survey attributes 93% of cases to far-right actors, according to Brasil de Fato.
Election night
The peak ran from the night of 25 October, when Lula's victory was announced, into the early hours of 26 October: 54 episodes in 43 municipalities across 16 states, most of them against people celebrating the result. There were 32 physical assaults, 8 threats, 11 attacks with lethal intent, 2 cases of verbal abuse and 1 of criminalisation.
In 13 of those episodes the identified perpetrators were state agents — military police officers, municipal guards and one prison officer.
After the ballot, the job
From 26 to 31 October came another 101 episodes, 78 of them work-related: dismissals, threats of dismissal, calls for boycotts or lists of people identified as Lula voters. The survey separates out 14 dismissals or threats of dismissal, 27 public calls to fire or boycott PT voters and 43 boycott lists.
The Ministério Público do Trabalho (labour prosecution service) had received 3,754 complaints of electoral harassment in 2026 by 29 October — more than the 3,373 recorded in the whole of 2022. Of those, 1,459 arrived in the three and a half days after the vote. The service opened proceedings over public calls by members of parliament for employers to dismiss Lula voters, and recommended that the posts be taken down.
In Fortaleza, a jeans factory fired at least 22 workers the morning after the election over their political positions. The labour courts ordered all of them reinstated within 48 hours.
The lethal cases
In Campo Novo do Parecis, in Mato Grosso, a man opened fire on people outside a bar after asking who supported the PT; civil police investigator Emilson Ormond Souza, 56, was killed. In Mangueirinha, in Paraná, a drunk driver broke through a police roadblock and struck four people celebrating Lula's win; activist Eliseu Pedrozo dos Santos died the next day.
The survey also counted 13 episodes against Indigenous peoples. On 13 October, in the Votouro Indigenous Land, in Benjamin Constant do Sul, Rio Grande do Sul, three Kaingang Indigenous people died in a conflict that followed the dismissal of workers who had joined a caravan supporting Lula. The same day, a petrol station attendant was shot dead and two more Indigenous people died during a military police operation. Fifteen people were injured.
Women and elected office
Of the 29 episodes against candidacies, mandates and parties, 14 had women as victims, and seven involved gender-based hostility — sexism, misogyny or transphobia. Federal deputy-elect Ana Elisa, 21, received death and rape threats; according to her office, the messages were arriving "every two minutes", alongside racist and sexist attacks.
"Democracy requires safety both for those competing for votes and for those who go to the polls," said Gisele Barbieri, political advocacy coordinator at Terra de Direitos. The escalation seen in 2026, she said, "demands firm responses from Brazilian institutions".
Glaucia Marinho, a coordinator at Justiça Global, said that when voting costs people their job or their life, "it is democracy that is at risk".
What the numbers show
Read together, the two figures point to a change in the scale of the target. While the violence was aimed at candidates, it reached a few hundred people exposed by profession; aimed at voters, the potential universe is the whole electorate — and, judging by the distribution across municipality sizes, it concentrates where each person's vote is recognisable to the neighbours.
With information from Agência Brasil and Brasil de Fato.
