About this election
The 2022 election to the Chamber of Deputies, held with the first round of the presidential vote on 2 October, returned an even more conservative and fragmented lower house even as the left narrowly recaptured the presidency. Jair Bolsonaro's Liberal Party (PL) elected the largest single bloc in recent memory — 99 of 513 seats — and the broader centre-right emerged strengthened, setting up a difficult cohabitation with the incoming government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The 513 deputies are elected for four-year terms by open-list proportional representation, with each state and the Federal District forming one multi-member constituency apportioned by population. For 2022 a new rule allowed parties to form federations that act as a single party for several years, designed to curb fragmentation; the PT, for example, ran within the "Brazil of Hope" federation alongside the Communist Party and the Greens. A rising electoral threshold also gradually squeezes the smallest parties out of the chamber.
The congressional contest was nationalised by the intense Lula–Bolsonaro polarisation. Bolsonaro encouraged his supporters to back PL candidates down the ballot, and the strategy worked: agribusiness, evangelical and security-focused candidates performed strongly. Lula's allies held their ground in the North-East but could not match the right's gains, and a generation of centrist and traditional parties continued to consolidate into a few larger blocs.
The PL won 99 seats on 16.64% of the vote, far ahead of the PT's 69. The centre and centre-right filled the rest of the top tier — União Brasil 59, the Progressives (PP) 47, the PSD and MDB 42 each, the Republicans 40 — while the PDT (17), PSB (14), PSDB (13), PSOL (12) and Podemos (12) trailed. Even with federations, more than a dozen parties won seats, and no bloc approached the 257 needed for a majority.
The result meant Lula began his third term without a reliable majority, dependent once again on negotiating with the "centrão" and on a Chamber whose centre of gravity sat to his right. The strengthened conservative bench shaped the early battles of his government over the budget, environmental policy and social legislation, and underlined how Brazil's split-ticket electorate had simultaneously chosen a left-wing president and a right-leaning Congress.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.