We are a year from. There is still a lot of uncertainty about the competitors: there is no definition of the right -wing candidate who will face the president, and no, it is not known who will be the candidates for the state government or the two vacancies to the Senate.
The rules that will guide the dispute and campaign resources, however, are already known.
The principle of electoral priority states that any change in the rules of the game must be approved and sanctioned up to one year before the election.
Thus, we already know that the House of Representatives will maintain them, that every 3 candidates presented by each party in the dispute for the Chamber of Deputies and Legislative Assemblies at least 1 must be a woman and that the rules for campaign, collection and accountability remain unchanged.
Such rules could have been changed if laws discussed throughout this year had been approved and sanctioned in time.
Last week, at a meeting of the mixed budget committee, it was campaign: $ 4.9 billion. Of this total, R $ 3.9 billion are resources originally intended for amendments of mandatory execution benches and R $ 1 billion will be relocated from other discretionary expenses provided for in the Union Budget.
In addition, the parties will have at their disposal R $ 1.4 billion from the party fund, according to the 2026 annual budget bill. The sum of the two funds is approaching the amount raised from companies in the 2014 election, the last with donations of legal entities, corrected by IGP-M: R $ 6.5 billion.
Are the R $ 6.3 billion for parties and candidates are too much or little?
The amount is equivalent to about $ 40 per voter able to vote. Considering the 6 positions in dispute, are R $ 6.66 per voter/position. As a comparison parameter, in 2025 the Ministries of the Environment and Culture had a budget of R $ 4.2 billion each.
The debate on political and electoral funding in the country, however, should change focus. It remains to discuss the form of the distribution of resources. Today is the party directions that decide the allocation of all resources, subject to few restrictions, such as all 30% for women and 30% for black and brown candidates.
Other countries adopt more creative models. Some condition transfers to the effective attendance of voters, others provide for distribution rules between federative entities, and there are those who use matching FUNDS mechanisms, where the public fund complements each individual donation in predefined proportion.
Exploring models that give citizens more voice can increase the legitimacy of the public fund and parties, as well as reduce the growing dissatisfaction of society with politics.
The restriction of financing sources increased pressure on public resources.
The problem is that the growth of this source of financing has not been accompanied by greater transparency in the functioning of parties or more democratic methods of resource allocation, which would increase the protagonism of citizens and could contribute to reduce the dissatisfaction of society with political institutions.
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