Brazil’s electoral court proposes accuracy seal for pollsters
Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court (TSE), which oversees the country’s elections, proposed on Tuesday creating an Electoral Accuracy Seal to recognize polling firms whose surveys most closely match official election results. The initiative was immediately criticized by the Brazilian Association of Research Companies (Abep), which argued that opinion polls measure voter preferences at a specific moment rather than predict election outcomes.
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TSE Chief Justice Kássio Nunes Marques presented a draft of the proposal during a meeting with polling firms. The court will accept comments on the draft until Friday before deciding whether to move forward with the initiative.
The meeting began shortly after 9:20 a.m. and lasted about an hour. Nunes Marques opened the session by emphasizing the importance of the discussion, then presented the draft. Representatives of each polling firm were then given up to five minutes to comment. TSE Justices Antonio Carlos Ferreira, Estela Aranha, and Floriano de Azevedo Marques, along with Deputy Prosecutor General for Electoral Matters Alexandre Espinosa, also attended the meeting.
According to participants, including some members of the court, the draft was distributed only during the meeting, and several attendees expressed reservations about the proposal.
Under the draft, the seal would “recognize and promote polling firms whose estimates show the greatest consistency with the official election results certified by the Electoral Court.”
It adds that all firms meeting accuracy standards, as defined in regulations issued by the TSE president, would receive the certification. The proposal says the initiative aims to improve alignment between polling data and official election results.
The draft, along with suggestions from polling firms due by Friday, could serve as the basis for broader guidance on election polling. Nunes Marques and other members of the court want to address the issue before this year’s election.
AtlasIntel Chief Executive Andrei Roman endorsed the proposal.
“AtlasIntel supports Justice Nunes Marques’s initiative to create a quality certification for polling firms based on objective accuracy criteria. We are available to contribute to the methodological discussion, drawing on similar institutional initiatives,” he wrote on X.
Abep, however, said the proposal rests on “a mistaken premise” about the purpose of election polling.
“Opinion polls measure voting intentions at the time of the interview. They are neither forecasts nor promises of election results. Between the interview and election day, voters change their minds, decide not to vote, or alter their behavior. Requiring a poll to ‘predict’ the outcome mistakes science for fortune-telling,” the association said.
The group also argued that the proposal creates perverse incentives, allowing firms with weaker methodologies to follow the results published by more rigorous pollsters and adjust their own figures to match the emerging consensus.
“When the goal becomes winning an ‘accuracy’ seal, the incentive shifts from producing the best possible survey to publishing whatever numbers maximize the chances of receiving the certification. That weakens, rather than strengthens, the quality of information available to voters,” the statement said.
The meeting with polling firms followed a decision by Nunes Marques in May to suspend publication of an AtlasIntel survey that showed Senator Flávio Bolsonaro’s presidential polling numbers falling after reports that he had sought funding from Banco Master owner Daniel Vorcaro for Dark Horse, a movie about his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro.
The injunction was forwarded to the full TSE for review but has been paused after one justice asked for more time to consider the case. According to Valor, instead of focusing solely on AtlasIntel, Nunes Marques now aims to expand the discussion to include potential restrictions on using audio and video content in election polling.
After respondents finished the main AtlasIntel questionnaire, which indicated Flávio Bolsonaro’s decrease in voter support, they listened to an audio recording in which the senator requested funding from Vorcaro. Nunes Marques suggested that the material might have prompted negative reactions toward the presidential candidate, a claim that AtlasIntel denies.
