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Detailed Electoral Data, Litigation & Supreme Court

Candidates facing administrative-misconduct lawsuits get elected at a 40% rate — higher than candidates with no lawsuit against their name at all.

Supreme Federal Court (STF) rulings, recorded with case number, reporting justice, subject, legal thesis, and outcome, make it possible to map both constitutional case law and the profile of power concentrated at the top of the judiciary. TSE's candidate registries carry gender, race, education, party, and status for every contender; official results report who was elected and with how many votes; and campaign-spending records reveal the money circulating behind each candidacy. Cross-referencing these three databases with CNJ's administrative-misconduct case records makes it possible to ask directly: does having a lawsuit against your name drive voters away — or is it irrelevant to the election outcome?

The Southeast also dominates in raw earmark value

Just as with the distribution by number of earmarks, the distribution by value confirms the Southeast's centrality in the map of federal budget power: four states concentrate nearly two-thirds of all value moved, with São Paulo alone accounting for more than a fifth of the national total.

Four states concentrate 64% of all parliamentary-earmark value — budget power follows the same map as political power.

Three authors account for R$ 27 billion

The concentration isn't just regional — it's institutional. The Health and Regional Development committees, combined with the budget's general rapporteur, account alone for R$ 27 billion in earmarks, a volume decided by a handful of bodies inside Congress.

Three authors concentrate R$ 27 billion in earmarks — a slice of the budget decided outside any direct electoral process.

Litigation that doesn't punish

Appeals over social rights — health, education, housing — make up 30% of everything that reaches the STF, but have a very low success rate: the Court is massively invoked by people seeking to secure a basic right, and most of the time it denies the request, a pattern the literature has already dubbed the judicialization of poverty. In the electoral arena, the picture is similar: candidates facing administrative-misconduct lawsuits are elected at a success rate near 40%, statistically close to that of candidates with no lawsuit at all — evidence that opening a case against a politician rarely amounts to punishing them at the ballot box.

Impunity fuels the continuity of questionable officials — both at the STF, which denies most of the social-rights cases it hears, and at the polls, which reelect people answering for administrative misconduct.

Crime pays at the ballot box

In 2022, candidates facing administrative-misconduct lawsuits were elected at a rate of 40% — higher than the 27% rate observed among candidates with no lawsuit at all. Only those carrying formal ineligibility have a low success rate, at 10%. The result is counterintuitive and revealing: having a misconduct case doesn't function as an electoral filter, and in some cases seems to even favor the candidacy, whether through greater media exposure or loyal voter bases that overlook the candidate's record.

Candidates with misconduct cases have a higher electoral success rate than candidates with no case at all — at the ballot box, crime pays.

The STF protects the system, not the vulnerable

Comparing success rates by subject, the pattern is stark: tax and criminal appeals have success rates of 50% and 40%, respectively, while social-rights and electoral appeals have success rates of just 15% and 16%. The Supreme Court hears far more social-rights cases than any other subject — and that's precisely where it most often denies the request, an imbalance that suggests a court more attuned to protecting the fiscal and penal system than to guaranteeing basic rights.

Social-rights appeals lose in 84% of cases — the STF behaves more like a guardian of the system than a guarantor of the rights of the most vulnerable.

Few candidates concentrate most of the votes

In municipal elections, the ten most-voted candidates in each race together take 40% of all valid votes, and the top fifty reach 65%. The majoritarian electoral system, by favoring strong, well-known names, leaves a long tail of candidates competing for ever-smaller slices of the electorate — a concentration of attention and votes that mirrors, in the electoral arena, the same concentration logic seen in the budget.

Ten candidates concentrate 40% of valid votes — the majoritarian system hides a much broader and more dispersed voter base than it appears.

Slow justice is denied justice

Extraordinary appeals — the type that reaches the STF after all lower-court avenues are exhausted — take between five and ten years to be judged, far longer than direct actions of unconstitutionality or writs of mandamus. For someone waiting on a ruling about a violated right, that timeline alone functions as a form of denial: the problem may cease to exist, expire, or lose practical relevance long before any final ruling.

Extraordinary appeals take five to ten years to be judged at the STF — slow justice is, in practice, denied justice.

More money, more convictions — and more impunity

The wealthiest states, with the largest public budgets, also concentrate the highest number of administrative-misconduct convictions — which seems contradictory until you notice that more money in circulation also means more opportunity for embezzlement and, at the same time, more institutional capacity for investigation. Piauí, with a much smaller budget, shows up with high per-capita convictions, a sign that the ratio between available public resources and institutional oversight may matter more than the absolute volume of money.

States with more public money in circulation register more misconduct convictions — but also more proportional impunity, given the volume of resources involved.

Explanatory hypotheses

The high electoral success rate of prosecuted candidates suggests part of the electorate tolerates, is unaware of, or doesn't punish corruption at the ballot box. The concentration of earmarks reveals a legislature captured by a few committees and rapporteurships, which decide without depending on direct popular approval. The higher success rate among candidates with misconduct cases — compared to candidates with no case — shows that voters often lack access to the relevant information or, having access, choose to overlook the candidate's record. And the low success rate of social-rights appeals indicates that the STF acts more as a guardian of the fiscal and institutional system than as an effective guarantor of rights.

Policy implications

Broad, accessible disclosure of misconduct cases could better inform voters' decisions at the ballot box. Active transparency about how these cases proceed could reduce the sense of impunity that today seems to reward, rather than punish, a record of irregularities. Party-list voting, instead of personalist voting, could reduce the extreme concentration of votes in a few names. Increasing the number of STF seats, or creating faster judgment mechanisms, could reduce the average time appeals take to be resolved. And tying eligibility to a certificate of integrity could function as an upfront filter, currently absent from the electoral process.