The Brazilian Free Electoral Broadcast Airtime and Public Opinion (FEBA) in the 2018 Presidential Election

Abstract

The 2018 election put Brazilian Free Electoral Broadcast Airtime in jeopardy. A candidate with only six seconds of radio and television free advertising time was elected president. Jair Bolsonaro's victory was not a unique phenomenon and candidates for state executives in the same situation were elected governors. But has the FEBA completely lost its relevance to the voter? To assess the degree of importance of the Brazilian model of electoral broadcast in the 2018 election, this article takes two different empirical approaches. The first analyzes the level of interest of FEBA based on its audience. The second measures the impact of exposure to election advertising on voters' level of knowledge in relation to the five most voted candidates for president. To this end, the article analyzes a series of polls carried out by the Datafolha Institute in the first round of the presidential elections in 2006, 2010, 2014, and 2018. The results show that voters' search for FEBA grew in 2018 in relation to the three previous elections and that watching election propaganda in 2018 contributed decisively to voters' level of knowledge about candidates. These findings highlight the importance of FEBA for Brazilian democracy.

elections; electoral campaign; Free Electoral Broadcast Airtime; political communication