Novelty Candidates Shape Brazil’s 2024 Congressional Race

Brazil’s tradition of “protest” or novelty candidates dates back to 1959, when a rhinoceros named Cacareco received thousands of votes in São Paulo. The practice resurfaced after the end of the military dictatorship in 1989 with the flamboyant cardiologist Dr. Enéas Carneiro, who captured 4.6 million votes in that year’s presidential contest. The most recent high-profile example is the circus clown-comedian Tiririca, who won a São Paulo congressional seat in 2010 with more than 1.3 million votes and has been re-elected four times, securing 70 000 votes in the 2022 election.

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Brazil’s proportional-representation system allocates seats and public funding based on each party’s total vote count. Political science professor Carlos Melo explains that “some of these candidates have enough votes to win their own seats, but others just add 1 000 or 2 000 votes to their parties. They don’t get seats, but they help their parties secure a bigger slice of Congress and public funds.” In the current race, a few hundred novelty candidates are among more than 7 800 individuals contesting congressional seats, and their votes can tip the balance for the parties that endorse them.

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Helicopter pilot Plínio Vicentin Júnior, campaigning under the moniker “Plínio Trump,” told reporters that Donald Trump is “likeable, iconic” and that he adopts the former U.S. Another novelty contender, Mick Jagger (real name Walcy Calixto Vieira), is a 66-year-old carpenter running for a Goiás state legislature seat, while “Tsunami Grandmother” (Scheile Aparecida Soares Brandão) seeks a Minas Gerais state seat.

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• “It is more about his posture,” — Claudio Santos

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• “Some of these candidates have enough votes to win their own seats, but others just add 1,000 or 2,000 votes to their parties. They don’t get seats, but they help their parties secure a bigger slice of Congress and public funds,” — Carlos Melo, a political science professor at Insper university in São Paulo

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