2014 Brazilian general election


General elections were held in Brazil on 5 October 2014 to elect the President, the National Congress, state governors and state legislatures. As no candidate in the presidential and several gubernatorial elections received more than 50% of the vote, a second-round runoff was held on 26 October.
In the first round of voting Dilma Rousseff won 41.6% of the vote, ahead of Aécio Neves with 33.6% and Marina Silva with 21.3%. Rousseff and Neves contested the runoff on 26 October and Rousseff won re-election by a narrow margin, 51.6% to Neves' 48.4%.

Presidential election

Incumbent President Dilma Rousseff of the Workers' Party, Brazil's first female president, was challenged by 11 other candidates. Minas Gerais Senator Aécio Neves from the Brazilian Social Democracy Party and Marina Silva from the Brazilian Socialist Party were her main rivals. Since none of the candidates obtained over 50% of the valid votes in the 5 October election, a second-round election was held on 26 October between Rousseff and Neves, who had finished first and second respectively in the 5 October vote.
In Brazil's closest presidential election results since 1989, Rousseff narrowly defeated Neves in the second round, taking 51.6% of the vote to Neves' 48.4%.
The original PSB candidate had been Eduardo Campos. However, he died in a plane crash in Santos on 13 August 2014, after which the party chose Silva, who had been his running mate, to replace him as the presidential candidate.

Campaign Issues

Economy

Dilma Rousseff
Defended the significant economic gains and improvements in living standards of her own administration and that of her predecessor, Lula da Silva.
Aécio Neves
Proposed sweeping reductions in the welfare state and state intervention in the economy.

Allegations of corruption

Shortly before the election a former executive of the state-run oil company Petrobras accused a minister, three state governors, six senators and dozens of congressmen from President Dilma Rousseff's Workers’ Party and several coalition allies of having accepted kickbacks from contracts.

Candidates

Debates

First round

Second round

Opinion polls

First Round

Second round

Results

President

Congress

Aftermath

The small difference between the votes of both candidates, around 3.5 million, made this election to be the most disputed of Brazil since the redemocratization. Dilma was sworn in as 36th President of Brazil on 1 January 2015 in a ceremony conducted by Renan Calheiros in the floor of the Chamber of Deputies.

International reaction

Presidents and representatives of different countries saluted the victory of Dilma Rousseff on 26 October over Aécio Neves.
Besides chiefs of state, the international press also reverberated Dilma's victory. The New York Times in the United States highlighted the reelection on the front page of the newspaper and states that the victory "endosses a leftist leader who has achieved important gains in reducing poverty and keeping unemployment low"; Argentine El Clarín highlighted on the front page that Dilma won by a narrow margin "at the end of a tough campaign, full of denounced and mutual accusations"; for the United Kingdom Financial Times, "Dilma now faces the task of uniting a country divided by the most aggressive campaign of recent times, to resurrect a creeping economy and pacify hostile markets"; Venezuelan El Universal highlighted on its first page Aécio Neves' reaction, who acknowledged his defeated and highlighted in his speech that "the priority now is to unite Brazil"; French Le Monde mentioned the defeat in São Paulo, main electoral college of the country, but "compensated by the victory in Minas Gerais, the second largest electoral college and Aécio Neves' political fief"; Spanish El País brings as a highlight an article signed by journalist Juan Arais, from Rio de Janeiro, entitled "The political change in Brazil will have to wait".

Crisis

From 2014 and on, right after the results of the elections, an economic crisis began in Brazil, having as a consequence the strong economic recession, succeeded by a retreat of the Gross Domestic Product for 2 consecutive years. The economy reduced in around 3.8% in 2015 and 3.6% in 2016. The crisis also brought a high level of unemployment, which reached its peak in March 2017, with a rate of 13.7%, representing more than 14 million Brazilians unemployed.
In 2016, the effects of the economic crisis were widely felt by the population, who needed to adapt their bills to the financial reality. According to a research made by the Industry National Confederation in that year, almost half of the interviewed began to use more public transportation and 34% don't have a health insurance anymore. The deepening of the crisis made 14% of the families to change their childrens' schools, from private to public, with a percentage higher than the one verified in 2012 and 2013, before the crisis. Besides that, consumers change products to the cheaper ones, waited for sales to buy higher value goods and saved more money for emergencies.
In the first quarter of 2017, GDP rose 1%, being the first growth after 8 consecutive quarter drops. Minister of Finance Henrique Meirelles said that, in that moment, the country "left the largest recession of the century".
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Yet in 2014 also began a political crisis. The match of this crisis happened on 17 March 2014, when the Federal Police of Brazil began a series of investigations and would be known as Operation Car Wash, initially investigating a corruption scheme and money laundry of billions of reais involving many politicians of the largest parties of the country. The operation had direct impact in the country politics, contributing for the impopularity of Dilma's administration, just as, posteriorly, for Temer's administration, as long as many of their ministers and allies were targeted of the operation, such as Geddel Vieira Lima and Romero Jucá. The operation is still ongoing with 51 operational phases and splits.
The protests against Dilma Rousseff government, due to the results of Operation Car Wash, occurred in many regions of Brazil, having as one of the main goals the impeachment of the president. The movement brought together millions of people on 15 March, 12 April, 16 August and 13 December 2015 and, according to some estimates, were the largest popular mobilizations in the country. The protest of 13 March 2016 was considered the largest political act in the history of Brazil and occurred over all the country, overcoming also Diretas Já, which occurred during the transition period from the Military Dictatorship to the redemocratization.

Rousseff's impeachment

On 2 December 2015, president of Chamber of Deputies, Eduardo Cunha, accepted one of the seven impeachment requests against Dilma, which was registered by jurists Hélio Bicudo, Miguel Reale Júnior and Janaína Paschoal, and delivered to Cunha 2 months before. In the original request, were included denounces of decrees signed by the president in 2015, to release R$ 2.5 billions, without Congress approval, nor prevision on budget. This operation is known as fiscal pedaling, and it's characterized as administrative misconduct.
The acceptance of the impeachment request was considered by part of the press as a retaliation against the president's party, which deputies announced on that same day that they would vote against Cunha in the Chamber's Ethics Committee, where he was investigated for a supposed participation in the scheme denounced in Operation Car Wash. Cunha denied any "bargain" relation with the government, stating that "the decision to accept the impeachment is factual, is concrete, has clear tipification", but kept attributing to president Rousseff responsibilities about the investigations against him. According to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Dilma didn't have "the will of doing politics" and didn't had any meeting with party caucuses' to try to repeal the impeachment.
Due to the parliamentary recess and the sues filed in the Supreme Federal Court with the objective to decide formally the rite of the process only on 17 March 2016, the Chamber elected, with open voting, the 65 members of the Special Committee which analyzed the impeachment request against Dilma Rousseff. There were 433 votes in favor of the committee membership and 1 against. On 11 April, the Special Committee, with 38 votes in favor and 27 against, approved the report, which defended the admissibility of the process. The report, made by deputy Jovair Arantes, went for voting in the floor of the Chamber. On 17 April 2016, a Sunday, the Chamber of Deputies, with 367 votes in favor, 137 against, besides 7 abstentions and 2 absences, impeached Rousseff and authorized the Federal Senate to install the process against the president.
On 6 May 2016, the Senate Impeachment Special Committee approved, with 15 votes in favor and 5 against, the report of senator Antônio Anastasia, in favor of the impeachment. On 11 May, Justice Teori Zavascki denied a government request to null the process. With the decision, the Senate kept the voting that would decide the suspension of Rousseff from office.
On 12 May 2016, with 55 favorable votes, 22 contrary and 2 absences, the Federal Senate authorized the opening of the impeachment process, and determined her suspension from the Presidency of the Republic for up to 180 days. On 31 August, the Federal Senate, with a voting of 61 to 20, removed Rousseff from office of President, but kept her political rights. With the impeachment, Michel Temer, who was Vice President of Brazil and Acting President until that moment, took office as President until the end of the term.