Two presidential hopefuls were highlighted in the beginning of the electoral campaign on TV and radio at the same time as the trial of Lula’s candidacy by the Superior Electoral Court: Geraldo Alckmin, whose video criticizing Bolsonaro obtained large repercussion; and the former president himself, who is back in the lead of mentions after losing space to Bolsonaro as the protagonist of the campaign in the past few weeks.

Among the five candidates with the highest voting intentions in recent polls, Alckmin was the most affected by the TV campaign: out of 132.7 thousand tweets about him between Friday (08/31) at noon and Sunday (09/02) at noon, there were 45 thousand publications about the subject, with 34% of the discussion about Alckmin. In fact, this impact led the PSDB candidate to the third place among the most mentioned presidential hopefuls on Twitter in this period, behind only Lula (581.8 thousand) and Bolsonaro (534.7 thousand).

Fernando Haddad, Lula’s substitute in the race, had a small impact on the debate about the former president between Friday and Sunday: 70.9 thousand tweets associated the two politicians (12.2% of the total references to Lula).

Evolution of the number of publications on Twitter
12pm Aug, 31 – 12pm Sep, 2

Source: Twitter | Elaborated by: FGV DAPP

Facebook

On Facebook, João Amoêdo was the candidate with the most engagement, summing up more than one million interactions between Friday (31) and Sunday (02), with an average of 35 thousand interactions per publication.

Engagement x Posts on Facebook
Aug, 31 – Sep, 1

Source: Facebook | Elaborated by: FGV DAPP