In September 2017, constitutional amendment 97 was approved, considered the most important since the Brazilian Law.
EC 97 prohibited proportional disputes and instituted the performance clause, which conditions access to public resources from the party fund and free electoral advertising time on radio and television to parties that achieve a minimum electoral performance in elections for the .
The clause will require, in 2026, that parties obtain at least 2.5% of the valid votes for federal deputy, distributed across at least nine UFs, with a minimum of 1.5% in each of them, or alternatively elect 13 deputies per nine distinct UFs. In 2030, the requirement will rise to 3% of the national vote or 15 elected deputies.
EC 97 was approved with a large majority, only the vote against it was advised, while the Network released its bench. The other parties supported the measure. In , 34 votes were in favor. It seems that the toucans did not foresee the storm that was coming.
The party, which was born from disagreements between different groups during the Constituent Assembly and governed the country for eight years, experienced its peak in the 1998 election, when it won 99 seats in the Chamber. In 2022 and no senator.
The can be attributed to several causes. Among them are the disarticulation promoted by the party’s traditional elites, support for , the Lava Jato scandals and the accusations against Aécio Neves, in addition to the rise of him as an exponent of the right — an electorate that, until then, voted for the PSDB. This situation, associated with increased demands for access to public resources, explains the recent news about the possible merger of the party.
Before the 2026 election, Tucano leaders need to maintain some bargaining power in negotiations, as the party still has access to the desired resources from the party fund and propaganda time. The object of the dispute is control of state and municipal directories after the merger.
It has already been speculated that the Tucanos were in negotiations to form a new federation with PDT, Solidariedade, MDB and/or PSD. A crucial point for the advancement of any negotiations will be control of the Minas Gerais directory, as it is the one that conducts the negotiations.
The hope for the survival of the PSDB is to bet that in the discussions of a new electoral reform, a topic guaranteed to be on the agenda in the second half of 2025, there will be the possibility of approving an amendment that will facilitate the party’s survival.
For all of us, whether or not interested in the future of toucans, it will be essential to follow these debates in Congress. The most important of them is new, currently being processed in , which proposes substantial changes to electoral rules, although it maintains the end of proportional coalitions and the requirement of minimum electoral performance for access to public resources.
