The chance of 2nd place in the 1st round winning in the 2nd is even rarer when the distance between candidates was greater than 10 percentage points in the 1st stage of the election
Large Brazilian cities, those with 200,000 voters or more, had 299 second-round contests from 1996 to 2020. In only 24.7% of these cases (74 times) there were changes in position between the candidates – when the 2nd placed in 1st turn ends by winning in the final round.
The chance of a turnaround is even lower when the distance between the candidates is greater than 10 percentage points: in only 6% of all second rounds this has occurred in the last 28 years.
The 2nd round is held when 1 candidate does not receive at least 50% + 1 of the valid votes in municipalities with more than 200 thousand voters.
In 2024, of the 103 cities that had the possibility of a second round, 52 will return to the polls again on October 27 to choose their mayors. In another 51 municipalities in this group with the largest electorate, the municipal head was elected in the 1st round of the election.
In 25 of the 52 cities that will have a 2nd round, the distance between the candidates in the 1st stage of this year’s election was between 0.1 and 10 percentage points. In another 27 municipalities, the difference was greater than that. Overturns in these cases have occurred only 19 times since 1996.
In São Paulo, the largest electoral college in the country, Ricardo Nunes (MDB) finished just 0.41 points ahead of Guilherme Boulos (Psol). In this case, however, the chance of a turnaround is remote: Pablo Marcal (PRTB) came in 3rd (with almost identical voting to the first placed candidates) and is a conservative candidate. His voters tend not to vote for Boulos.
Read in the infographics below the names of the candidates who went to the 2nd round in each of the 52 cities that will have a new round of voting and find out the distance between the two:
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