How We Monitored Criminal Violence During Brazil's Municipal Elections

Organized crime wields a longstanding influence over Brazil's politics and has historically used violence to sway electoral outcomes, which is why InSight Crime has closely monitored violent incidents in the lead-up to the most recent October election cycle.

The two rounds of municipal elections in Brazil took place on October 6 and 27, and in the six months leading up to this period, the states of S?o Paulo and Rio de Janeiro registered the highest number of violent events involving electoral candidates. Those states are home to the First Capital Command (Primeiro Comando da Capital – PCC) and the Red Command (Comando Vermelho – CV), respectively.

Besides noticing the continuing trends of violence trends that have already been reported in previous elections, we noticed a higher level of illicit financial flows related to campaigning through our daily monitoring of news. We used our partnership with ACLED (Armed Conflict Location & Events Data) to better understand this scenario and monitor violent events in all Brazilian states.

First, we wrote codes that would automatically get ACLED's data and help us to better visualize the events, which we filtered to only include cases of political violence targeting local administrators. Then, we analyzed trends from six months before the elections to understand how the incidence of violence had evolved, matching the occurrences with the geographic location of gangs. This allowed us to understand how they were linked to organized crime.

With the cleaned data in hand, we created graphics to add clarity to the information.

We also analyzed trends on the use of illicit flows of money to manipulate elections, based on the news that we gathered in our monitoring. For that, we kept track of police operations that targeted money used to finance political campaigns and buy votes, for example.

To better understand the role of organized crime in Brazil's latest municipal elections, read our investigation here.