Folha updates GPS Partidário with data from 2026 and shows Novo as the most right-wing party and PSTU as the most left-wing party

Novo continues as the most right-wing party, and the PSTU, the most left-wing, in the Party GPS, Folha's metric that orders the acronyms from left to right.

The ruler was updated incorporating data from 2026 and the recent behavior of deputies, measured by five indicators: votes in the Chamber of Deputies, formation of parliamentary fronts, party migration, party coalitions and campaign donations.

The Brazilian party system is one of the most fragmented in the world. It is not simple to know the position of each party on the political map, especially with mergers, incorporations and changes in alliances. The challenge increases when the official position of a party does not match the way in which its representatives make decisions.

Therefore, the GPS starts from the analysis of public trails of candidates, coming from the TSE (Superior Electoral Court) and the Chamber of Deputies, which show how the parties position themselves in practice.

The report considered 1,097 votes, 320 parliamentary fronts, 11.2 thousand changes of acronym, 15.6 thousand coalitions and 1.1 million donors, covering 29 of the 30 acronyms.

The PCO (Party of the Workers' Cause) is the only one that was left out, because it did not elect a deputy, never shared a ticket and is below the minimum cuts in exchanges and campaign donors.

The 2026 ruler shows the 29 parties in new blocks distributed on the left, center and right. The boundaries between the fields were drawn based on academic studies on ideology.

The GPS does not use the terms extreme right or extreme left to characterize parties because it measures the proximity between them, not the methods they employ. The "extreme" is not the furthest point on the scale, but it qualifies those who practice or preach violence as a political method, which would require another measurement.

The final GPS ruler is the average of the other five rulers. The account uses rankings: the position of each party in the queue is valid, not the numbers on each scale.

The first indicator counts how each parliamentarian positioned themselves on the Chamber of Deputies panel. The metric includes votes from January 2023 to July 2026 and includes 565 deputies present in at least 10% of them (including substitutes).

This metric indicates that, in most votes, the left bloc and the center voted with the government, totaling 423 deputies against 142 for the opposition.

In the 1,097 votes observed, 9 out of 10 votes (91.5%) were as instructed by the party leader.

In general, the more the parliamentarian votes with the government, the more aligned he is with the left; otherwise, more aligned to the right. The calculation, however, is a little more complex, following a logic of attractions and repulsions between the acronyms.

The calculation is made using a statistical model used for 40 years to measure the American Congress. Number does not measure a quantity, like meters or years; It's just for comparison.

For example, if PSOL, Rede, PCdoB vote yes for a proposal and the PT, aligned with this group, votes no alongside PL, Novo and DC, this vote puts the PT to the right of the ruler, because it is following a set of acronyms that generally votes together and repels the other group.

In this first metric, the PT is the most left-wing party. Avante, from the center, which in the final ruler is to the right of MDB and PSD, appears as the leftmost center acronym, therefore with more affinity with this field in Parliament's decisions.

The ruler below shows the position of each deputy according to their votes.

Missão has only one deputy, less than the threshold of three to become a party position, which is why it does not appear on the ruler.

Federal deputy Julia Zanatta (PL-SC), present in 71% of the votes, is the most right-wing. After her comes Gustavo Gayer (PL-GO), present in 82%. At the other end, the one furthest to the left is Padre João (PT-MG), present in 92%, followed by Lenir de Assis (PT-PR), in 37% of the votes.

In 1,014 votes with a quorum in the three blocks, only three times did the two ends of the ruler vote together and the middle voted on the other side. The clearest example is from June 25, 2025, when the subject was the size of the Chamber: a request attempted to remove the project to increase seats from 513 to 531 from the agenda.

They voted to remove PT (39 to 16), PSOL (12 to 0), PL (60 to 24) and Novo (5 to 0) from the agenda; they voted to maintain MDB, PSD, PP, Union and Republicans, each by a large majority. The left was not complete: PDT, PSB and PCdoB took the lead. The request fell by 200 to 254, the increase passed, and President Lula (PT) vetoed the text on July 16th.

The second GPS metric analyzes the composition of parliamentary fronts. To create a front, the signatures of a third of Congress, one minutes and one representative are enough. The report considers the signatures of deputies on each of the 320 fronts created in the current legislature.

Left and right appear, to a large extent, in sets of themes: income, minorities and environment on the one hand; market, weapons, agriculture and customs of the other. In the middle, with no defined side, are fronts such as Defense of the Textile Industry and Combating Violence in a Digital Environment.

The PT's share of signatures ranges from 35% in the LGBTQIA+ Rights Front to zero in the Anti-Abortion Front, and the PL's share goes in the opposite direction, from almost nothing to 47%. The PSD, Republicans and Union sign on both sides of the ruler in similar proportions.

On an individual level, however, there are contradictions: 41 deputies signed at the same time the Front for the Free Market and the Front for the Renationalization of Eletrobras. Half of the 41 are from PL, PP and Republicans.

The third indicator that forms the Party GPS is the migration of acronyms: where the candidates who change their party come from and go to, considering the 2022, 2024 and 2026 elections.

Since 2022, 176 candidates have left the PT. Their main destinations were PDT (23) and PSB (22), followed by MDB, Rede and Repúblicas (12 each). Two people left for PL and two others for Novo.

763 candidates emerged from União Brasil, and the prominent destination was PL (106), followed by Podemos (76) and Republicans (75).

The absolute number reflects which large party attracts more people: of every 100 politicians who changed their party in the country, 9 went to PL, 8 to the Republicans and 7 to the MDB, while 1 went to the PSOL. Therefore, the ruler compares each pair of parties with what would be expected if the destination were drawn based on the size of the acronyms.

The fourth metric is party coalitions, acronyms that come together to register the same candidate. It considers 15,361 slates formed in 5,569 cities for the 2024 municipal elections, in addition to 278 slates formed for the majority positions in 2026.

Parties such as MDB and PSD, PL and União, PDT and PT collide with each other within what is expected for their sizes. PT and PL almost do not form slates together, and Novo and PSOL did not share any in the period.

The PSTU is a case of isolation: of the 53 tickets on which it appears, 52 were single party, and the only one shared throughout the country was with PSOL and Rede.

The last indicator of the methodology is campaign donations. It is based on 1.4 million donations in the 2022 and 2024 elections, made by 1.1 million different CPFs, totaling R$2.1 billion. Donations from 2026 were not considered because the data is still partial.

Just as most candidates never change their acronym, 96 out of every 100 donors finance just one party. That is why only the 47 thousand who donated to more than one acronym are included in the analysis.

As two large parties are more likely to share more donors just because of their size, each pair is compared with what would happen if the donor chose their acronyms by lottery, in proportion to the number of donors from each party. In this scenario, PT and PL would have 2,600 donors in common. They had 440. Between PSOL and PT, the draw predicted 560; 3,500 appeared.

Within the left, party pairs share almost triple the number of donors that chance would predict. Within the right, ideological loyalty is lower, just a fifth more than expected.

In the five rulers, the order changes little, reinforcing the consistency of the position. The sides do not vary: PSOL and PT on the left in the five, PL and Novo on the right. União and PSB appear close to them, each on one side, and MDB and PSD are always in the middle.

This is the third time that Folha measures the party position. Despite methodological differences, there is a high level of agreement between the versions.

The final result is used by the newspaper to apply the colors and gradations that characterize each party, in addition to guiding reports in electoral coverage.

The complete methodology can be read at this link.