Folha launches this Sunday (6) the Party GPS 2026, an analysis that situates Brazilian parties from left to right based on the practical life of politics, not what each party declares to be.
It shows the proximity between 29 acronyms based on five types of public information: voting in Congress, formation of parliamentary fronts, coalitions, party changes and electoral donations.
At the end, it displays a ruler with the distance between the parties, going from left to right. The methodology was based on other Brazilian studies.
1,097 votes, 320 fronts, 11.2 thousand acronym changes, 15.6 thousand coalitions and 1.1 million donors were analyzed, covering 29 of the 30 active acronyms, considering the most up-to-date dates.
The PCO (Partido da Causa Operária) is the only one that was outside the rule: it did not elect a deputy, never shared a ticket with another party and is below the minimum cuts in exchanges and donors, so there is not enough public behavior to measure it.
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 the mergers, incorporations and changes in alliances that occur every few years.
The challenge increases when a party's official position does not match the way its representatives vote or make other decisions. Each of the five measures has its own bias: the plenary also measures governmentism; the plates, convenience. But each person only distorts their record, while ideology permeates everyone. When the measures are combined, the biases are diluted.
If in votes such as the Income Tax exemption for those earning up to R$5,000 there was unanimity, in other cases, such as the urgent request to vote on amnesty for those convicted on the 8th of January, the division was clear. While all PL and Novo deputies were in favor, all PT and PSOL deputies were against.
In the formation of parliamentary fronts, Against Abortion and CACs (Collectors, Sports Shooters and Hunters) attract the most conservative end of the spectrum, with a disproportionate presence of PL and Novo, while the Environmentalist and LGBTI+ fronts call for groups such as PV and Rede.
In electoral alliances, ideologically close parties, such as Mobiliza and Avante, come together much more than the size of each one alone would explain.
In party migration, PSDB and União Brasil neither attract nor avoid each other; What brings them together is that their candidates come from the same parties and leave for the same parties.
In electoral donations, those who contribute to the PCB tend to donate to PSOL, never to Novo.
The Party GPS does not measure the doctrine that each party professes, it measures what it does.
The methodology, which is in its third edition, bases the colors that Folha assigns to each political party and allows grouping the acronyms in the newspaper's data analysis, measuring the proximity between them at each election.
The 2026 GPS was adapted to better photograph the current cycle. One of the changes is the way of deciding where the left ends and the right begins. Before, each field had a similar number of parties; Now, courts have as a reference an academic survey in which political scientists rated the parties.
The 2022 metric combined seven factors, including academic research and the networks' Ideological GPS, which was discontinued due to restrictions on data collection on platform
Despite methodological differences, there is a high level of agreement between the rules.
Votes in the Chamber of Deputies
What the indicator measures: the parliamentary vote that appears on the plenary panel.
In the current legislature, from January 2023 to July 2026, the Chamber recorded 1,097 roll call votes. The criterion includes 565 deputies who had participation above 10%.
The yes of deputy Nikolas Ferreira (PL-MG) to the urgency of amnesty is one of these records, which is equivalent to a green square in the graph below. Stacked in a table of deputies by votes, the records total 620 thousand squares.
The reordering of the table just by combining deputies who vote similarly, without using information about party, highlights a three-bloc structure.
From left to right: 121 deputies from parties such as PT, PSOL, PCdoB and PSB; 302 of acronyms such as União, PSD, Republicans, MDB and PP, the so-called centrão; and 142, two thirds of them, from PL and Novo.
In most votes, the left bloc and the center vote together with the government: 423 deputies against 142 for the opposition.
From the reordering, the report generated a number per deputy: those who vote similarly receive similar numbers. The calculation is made using a statistical model of ideal points, used for 40 years to measure the United States Congress.
On a scale where 0 is the most left-wing deputy and 100 the most right-wing deputy, the deputy in the middle of the PT bench is 7, and the MDB deputy is 33; that of PL is in 68, and that of Novo, in 78. What matters are the distances: in the votes of this legislature, the MDB is closer to the PT than to the PL.
What the indicator does not see: the plenary is government territory, so the ruler measures, in large part, only the relationship between each deputy and the Planalto.
It is through negotiations with the Executive that a large part of what goes to vote is chosen. It is also for them that loyalty is repaid with positions and amendments.
In the 1,097 votes analyzed, 9 out of 10 votes (91.5%) were as instructed by the party leader. Before separating left and right, this map separates government and opposition.
Recalculating the years of Jair Bolsonaro's (PL) government, the centrão was on the other side of the map, glued to PL and PSL, the old acronym that elected the then president. The Novo appeared in the middle, alongside the MDB, because it was opposed to part of the agenda. These parties did not cross the spectrum, it was the government who switched sides.
In 2026, under the Lula (PT) government, the centrão appears closer to the left in the votes than in the other indicators analyzed in this GPS.
Of 1,014 votes with a quorum, only in three did the two ends of the ruler vote together and the middle voted on the other side. An example is the request that attempted to remove the project to increase the seats in the Chamber 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; voted to maintain the MDB, PSD, PP, Union and Republicans agenda. The request fell by 200 to 254, the increase passed, and President Lula (PT) vetoed the text.
Parliamentary fronts
What the indicator measures: The signature of deputies on the 320 parliamentary fronts to represent a cause or a sector. The analysis does not position each deputy, but the parties.
Parliamentary fronts have no budget or formal power. To create one, all you need are the signatures of a third of Congress, one minute and one representative. As every front is born from 198 signatures, a market for kindness was created: the deputy signs his colleague's list hoping to be reciprocated when he creates his own.
On paper, a typical deputy has more than one hundred signatures. When a survey interviewed 6 out of 10 congressmen and asked which fronts each one actually participated in, attending meetings, the average did not reach two. Few fronts, such as agriculture, have weekly meetings and their own structure.
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 the Defense of the Textile Industry, the Fight against Violence in the Digital Environment and the Brazil-China Relationship.
The PT's share ranges from 35% on the LGBTQIA+ Rights front to zero on Against Abortion; that of PL follows the opposite path, from almost nothing to 47%. The PSD, Republicans and Union sign on both sides of the ruler in similar proportions.
The ends of the voting and front rulers coincide: PT on one side, PL and Novo on the other. The core varies enough to cross the entire ruler. MDB, PSD, PP, União, Republicans and Podemos appear on the left when the criterion is a vote in the plenary and on the right when the criterion is the signature of a parliamentary front.
It's not a contradiction. A vote registers support or opposition to the government of the moment; a signature records theme affinity. The center governs with those who are in the Planalto and signs with those who think alike.
On the ten fronts to the left of the ruler, PL and Novo account for 5.1% of signatures, a quarter of the share they have in the 320 as a whole (20.8%). In the ten most to the right, PT, PSOL, PCdoB and Rede account for 0.3%, compared to the 16.5% they have together.
On an individual level, there are contradictions: 41 deputies signed at the same time the Front for the Free Market and the Front for the Renationalization of Eletrobras, both about the same company and with no middle ground possible. Half of the 41 are from PL, PP and Republicans.
Party changes
What the indicator measures: the change of acronym of those who contested two consecutive elections, comparing each candidacy with the immediately previous election: 2024 with 2022, and 2026 with 2024. There were 21.4 thousand cases of candidates in consecutive elections, and in just over half (11.2 thousand) there was a change of acronym.
Since 2022, 176 candidates have left the PT. The main destinations were PDT (23) and PSB (22), followed by MDB, Rede and Repúblicas (12 each). Two people went to PL and two to Novo.
763 left from União Brasil: 106 went to PL, 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.
If the destination were drawn, each party would receive migrants in proportion to what it received in the entire country: the PL, which received 9 out of every 100 who changed their party, would receive 9 out of every 100 who left the PT. In this scenario, the change of party would only reflect the size of the acronyms, not the affinity between them.
The biggest deficit in the table is between Novo and PT, with 18 changes occurring for every 100 expected due to the size of the acronyms. PSDB and União Brasil, neighbors in the composite ruler, exchange candidates with each other exactly at the so-called chance rate (72 exchanges, against 72 expected).
Being part of the federal government's base doubles the attraction of an acronym, being in the governor's party weighs more, especially for those who depend on poorer strongholds. Cash on hand and the chance of being elected also count, such as switching to a party that easily surpasses the electoral quotient.
Of the 11.2 thousand party changes, only 25 crossed the entire ruler, 2 in every thousand. Five people left Rede for PL, four from PRTB for Rede, three from PL for Rede, two from PT for Novo, two from PSOL for PL, one from PL for PT.
What the indicator doesn’t see: the reason for the change. A change can be motivated by conviction, by the party window that opens every four years, by the electoral fund of R$4.9 billion, or by a fight with the municipal directorate.
Party coalitions
What the indicator measures: the set of acronyms that came together to register the same candidate for a majority position. Entering a coalition means accepting to govern together.
The 15,361 slates formed in 5,569 cities for the 2024 elections are considered, in addition to 278 slates formed for the majority positions in 2026. As there are fewer vacancies in dispute, the 2026 data correspond to less than 2% of the total.
The interactive graph below shows how parties collide with each other.
Large pairs, such as MDB and PSD, PL and União or PDT and PT, share many tickets, but at the draw rate: nothing more than their sizes predict. The clear preferences are for small parties, which join up to five times more than expected. Refusals also appear: PT and PL share tickets at one tenth of the expected rate, PL and PSOL at 0.04, and Novo and PT did not share any.
The PSTU is the extreme case: what puts it on the edge is not alliance, it is isolation. Of the 53 tickets on which he appears, 52 were single-party, and the only one shared throughout the country was with PSOL and Rede.
On the other side of the spectrum, União has no preferred partnership on the right, as no pair reaches one and a half times the chance rate. What keeps him on that side is the refusal of the other camp: he only shared a ticket with PSOL in 43 municipalities, when chance predicted 179.
The advantage of sharing a mayoral ticket has changed in recent years. Until 2018, two related parties added up the votes of their candidates for councilor in the electoral quotient account, and this was the biggest attraction of joining together.
Since 2020, however, each party has run alone for City Council. What remains is radio and television time, which grows according to the number of parties gathered on the ticket, and the electoral fund, which affiliates can spend together. An acronym that appears on full lists in many cities accumulates partnerships without this meaning ideological preference.
What the indicator doesn't see: the reason for each plate. The municipal platform is the most pragmatic of the five records: an acronym that appears in full numbers, in many cities, accumulates partnerships that say more about local convenience than about the program. There is also the case of federations, where the law requires joint entry on the ticket.
PT, PC do B and PV enter the 3,187 PT tickets together because they cannot enter separately; the same goes for PSDB and Citizenship, and for PSOL and Rede. Federating is a choice, and a strong one; but it is just one choice, which the law repeats on each ticket. Therefore, a separate note for these cases, the gray lines in the graphs.
Electoral donations
What the indicator measures: each donation from an individual to a candidate. There were 1.4 million donations in the 2022 and 2024 elections declared to the Electoral Court, made by 1.1 million different CPFs, totaling R$2.1 billion.
Donations from 2026 were not considered because the deadline for the final rendering of electoral accounts ends in November.
Most campaign money previously came from companies, a modality prohibited by the STF (Supreme Federal Court) in 2015. In 2017, Congress created the electoral fund for financing and, today, 3 out of every 4 reais in campaigns come from public funds.
The purpose of the ruler is not to measure the amount allocated, but rather the gestures.
Electoral crowdfunding, legalized in 2017, meant that half of 2022 donations were worth up to R$10. Donating stopped being a businessman's thing and became a political act for a million voters.
In 2022, Jair Bolsonaro's fundraising brought 386 thousand donors to the PL, the largest list ever recorded; in 2024, that of Pablo Marçal (PRTB), then a candidate for Mayor of São Paulo, brought 96 thousand to the party. Donations are the only one of the five measurements in which the acronym, dwarfed by the other rulers, has a large sample.
Just as most candidates never change their acronym, 96 out of every 100 donors finance just one party. Dust
