Election day in Brazil saw intense presence in the social networks throughout Sunday. Until 10 p.m., with the confirmation of the second round between Jair Bolsonaro and Fernando Haddad, we registered 4.85 million references to the candidates on Twitter. The volume is the largest ever registered by FGV DAPP since 2014 about a political event with impact on the networks.

Evolution of mentions per hour to the political actors on Twitter

The debate grew continuously from 8 a.m. until midday and became more stable in from early afternoon on. After 7 p.m., when the partial results of the presidential first round started being released, the debate gained a very upward curve, with 1.94 million new tweets until 10 p.m. (an average of 10.7 thousand tweets/minute).

Throughout the day, Bolsonaro maintained a strong lead over the other presidential candidates on Twitter, registering 3.47 million mentions until 10 p.m. Ciro Gomes, who began a significant movement of collecting mentions on the network in the end of last week, garnered 1.34 million references in the period, far ahead of Fernando Haddad (646.4 thousand). However, with the definition of the second round between the PT candidate and Bolsonaro, Haddad consolidated a trend of increase and surpassed Ciro after 8 p.m.

Volume of mentions to the political actors on Twitter

Jair Bolsonaro

With the immediate increase in mentions to the candidates after the start of the vote counting for president, Bolsonaro reached 8.4 thousand tweets per minute at around 7 p.m. Despite the result in the ballots, however, the most retweeted publications about the PSL candidate have a critical tone and talk about the users’ concern with the future of Brazil, especially regarding the maintenance of the democracy and the defense of the minorities.

Ciro Gomes

In turn, the PDT candidate, with 3.1 thousand tweets per minute at around 7 p.m., was more associated with messages that regret his defeat against Fernando Haddad. On one hand, requests that the former governor of Ceará to run for president again in 2022 were among the most retweeted posts. On the other hand, the expectation of a “turnaround”, which had grown on the network in the last few days, was target of criticism and memes.

Fernando Haddad

The third candidate with the most mentions until 10 p.m., with 646.4 thousand mentions, Haddad showed a trend of increase on Twitter since 6 p.m., even surpassing Ciro after 8 p.m. The fact that the voting count initially pointed to a potential second round – a result that would soon be confirmed – caused the multiplication of mentions supporting the PT candidate, associated a lot more with an “anti-Bolsonaro” agenda than with political affinity. There were recurrent posts stating that the antipetismo (the anti-PT movement) must be “overcome” in the second round to benefit the defense of rights and the democracy.