Black candidates in municipal elections outnumber whites
Brazil’s Electoral Court has registered 240,587 black candidates for this year’s municipal elections—52.7 percent of the candidates for mayor and councilor. This is the second time in history the number of black hopefuls exceeds the number of white ones, who total 215,763 this year. The first round of this year’s municipal elections will be held on October 6.
Previously, the only election in which black candidates had outnumbered white candidates was in the 2022 general elections, when the number represented 50.2 percent of the total.
The figures were released Tuesday (Aug. 20) by the Superior Electoral Court, after the authorities consolidated the data on candidacies submitted, which added up to 456,310 this year. Of these, 155 thousand are from women, 33.96 percent of the total.
The highest percentage of black candidates is from the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB), with 70.19 percent of its candidates declaring themselves black.
Under the criteria adopted by statistics bureau IBGE, also implemented by the Electoral Court, black people are individuals who declare themselves to be brown or black. In the 2022 Census, 56.1 percent of the Brazilian population fall under this category.
