No candidate for the Presidency of the Republic who finished in third place managed to be elected president in new attempts. Since redemocratization in 1989, all alternatives to the first two places — some labeled third way — ended up turning to state disputes.
In 2026, 5 of the 7 presidential candidates who came third in the elections over the last 36 years must face regional disputes: (PSB) and (Rede) are pre-candidates for the Senate in São Paulo; (PSDB) is a pre-candidate for governor in Ceará; and Heloísa Helena (Rede) and (Republicans) should launch themselves as federal deputies for the .
In addition to them, two other names that came in third place turned their attention to state platforms in the past: Leonel Brizola () was elected governor of Rio de Janeiro after the 1989 presidential election and Enéas Carneiro (Prona), third in 1994, was the most voted federal deputy in the country in 2002, with 1.5 million votes.
The context of Brizola and Enéas’ candidacies is also different. The two were candidates in periods before the polarization between the PT and the PSDB, which occurred between 1994 and 2014, and between the PT and Bolsonarism, which marked Brazilian politics from 2018 onwards.
Political scientist Luciana Santana, professor at UFAL (Federal University of Alagoas), assesses that the acceptance of polarization by most politicians, especially by those who tried to escape it, follows the trend of the Brazilian electorate.
“As much as we have a multi-party system in Brazil, there is a natural polarization in the behavior of the voters themselves, who in the final stretch are defined by the useful vote, because they see from the polls who is better placed and throw their chips in there”, he says.
For Renato Meirelles, founder of Instituto Locomotiva (focused on market and public opinion research), the idea of a third-way candidacy is “very viable as a social desire, but almost impossible as an electoral project” as it fails to gather enough votes. “It’s as if there was a market, but there was no product,” he says.
In 2026, voting intention polls again point to a scenario of polarization between (PT) and the Bolsonaro family — this time, with the senator (). In , they led in the first round with 39% and 35%, respectively. Far behind were other names that tried to project themselves as a third way: (), with 5%, (Novo), with 4%, Renan Santos (Missão), with 2%, Aldo Rebelo (DC), with 1%, and Cabo Daciolo (Mobiliza), with 1%.
The main bet in recent months on an alternative name was articulated by , president of the PSD, who even considered launching the governors of PR, Ratinho Junior, and RS, Eduardo Leite. None, however, showed signs of taking off. The latest attempts involved a , instead of the dispute for the Government of Ceará, and the pre-candidacy launched by Avante de .
Accession
Simone Tebet ran in 2022 for the MDB as a centrist alternative to the polarization between Lula and (PL). The election was the fiercest in history and, after finishing third, he supported the PT member in the second round. With Lula’s victory, she was appointed Minister of Planning.
Although she built a political career far from the left, with agendas linked to economic liberalism and agribusiness in Mato Grosso do Sul, she became a candidate for the Senate on the ticket led by the PT in São Paulo at the request of Lula himself.
His running mate, also , is another former presidential candidate. Placed third twice (2010 and 2014) in presidential disputes, she obtained the best result in the position in 2014 (21.3%), in the last year in which PT and PSDB faced each other in the second round — a former PT member, she supported the toucan Aécio Neves in the final stretch of that election.
Marina was already broken with the PT when she ran for president for the first time, in 2010. She worked for other parties on the left (PV and PSB) before founding Rede, an acronym under which she ran again for President in 2018 – her third and final attempt –, always with environmentalist agendas aligned to the left.
In 2022, she joined his platform in São Paulo, where she was elected federal deputy. She was appointed Minister of the Environment, a role she had already held in his first terms (2003-2008), and returned to the polls in a political effort carried out by the PT.
Also a former PT member and member of the Network, the pre-candidate for federal deputy in Rio de Janeiro Heloísa Helena presented herself as the most left-wing option in the 2006 election, running for PSOL. On that occasion, he promoted, finishing in third place. To this day, he openly criticizes the PT and Lula himself, even with a wing of his party supporting his re-election.
Change
Ciro Gomes ran for President four times (1998, 2002, 2018 and 2022). In two of them (1998 and 2018), he came in third place; in the first, in opposition to the Fernando Henrique Cardoso (PSDB) government and, in the second, critical of the Michel Temer (MDB) government.
Former governor of Ceará, Ciro had a center-left political role, having been minister under Itamar Franco and Lula, in the PT member’s first term. In the 2018 election, he criticized PT and PSDB and, defeated, did not want to stand on Fernando Haddad’s (PT) platform in the second round.
Four years later, he once again positioned himself as an alternative to polarization (this time, to Lula and Bolsonaro) and received just 3.04% of the votes, his worst performance in presidential contests. He supported the PT member in the second round in 2022, but, for 2026, he is negotiating a candidacy for the Ceará government.
Former governor of Rio de Janeiro, Anthony Garotinho also began his career on the center-left and is now part of a party (Republicans) that is courted by both the PT and Bolsonarism in the state.
In 2002, after having governed Rio with a welfare agenda, Garotinho, in the PSB, was third in the presidential election that elected Lula for the first time. Since then, he has tried to run twice for the government of Rio de Janeiro (2014 and 2018), once for federal deputy (2022) and another.
In the 2018 and 2022 elections, his candidacy was rejected by the Electoral Court because he was considered ineligible – he was, between 2016 and 2019, accused of electoral fraud and embezzlement of public funds in Campos dos Goytacazes, his electoral stronghold, during the administration of his wife, former governor Rosinha Garotinho. The processes that led to the arrests were annulled and he is rehearsing a candidacy for federal deputy this year.
No polarization
The only governor elected by popular vote in two different states – Rio Grande do Sul and Rio de Janeiro –, Leonel Brizola was placed third in the first direct election for president after the end of the dictatorship, in 1989.
Founder of the PDT, he competed for leftist votes with Lula, whom he supported in the second round against Fernando Collor (PRN), who would emerge victorious, in a gesture considered symbolic to this day by PT members. The following year, he was again elected governor of Rio de Janeiro and, in 1994, he ran for President again, finishing in fifth place.
Always active on the left and for labor causes, he returned to the polls in 1998 as Lula’s vice-president, in yet another defeat for FHC, and ran in his last election in 2002 for senator of Rio de Janeiro, finishing in sixth place. He died after suffering a heart attack.
Also in 1989, cardiologist Enéas Carneiro ran for President for Prona, a party that he himself had founded and which would later merge with Valdemar Costa Neto’s PL. With just 15 seconds of television advertising, he turned the emphatic way he presented himself to voters (“my name is Enéas”) into a catchphrase, finishing in 12th place.
With conservative and nationalist agendas, he was placed third in the 1994 presidential election and fourth in the 1998 election. Defeated in the election for the Mayor of São Paulo in 2000 (finishing in fifth place), he was the federal deputy elected with the highest number of votes in 2002 (1.5 million). Re-elected in 2006, , victim of leukemia.
