2020 Shortlist
Como Bolsonaro votou nos últimos 20 anos na Câmara
Category: Best visualization (small and large newsrooms)
Country/area: Brazil
Organisation: Nexo Jornal
Organisation size: Small
Publication date: 22/04/2019
Credit: Gabriel Zanlorenssi, Caroline Souza, Rodolfo Almeida
Project description:
The current president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, have served as a representative in the Chamber of Deputies (lower house) for 28 years. Based on data of his records between 1998 and 2018, we designed a visual representation of his proximity with each party and each government. Known by his far-right positions, Bolsonaro had the lowest rate of concordance of the votes with leftist parties. One of our conclusions was that he tended to vote closely with right-wing representatives and members of gun’s lobby.
Impact reached:
The impact of the publication was to provide information of the records of the current president of Brazil, while he was a congressman. It is far known his alignment with far-right issues, but the alignment with specific parties and the each government was not explored.
Techniques/technologies used:
We used R to collect, treat and analyse data, and also to produce the visualizations. The data was collect through the API of the Chamber of Deputies.
The final layout was made in Adobe Illustrator.
What was the hardest part of this project?
To understand exactly what can be considered an allignment of the vote in the Chamber of Deputies. Besides yes or no votes, the representatives can abstain, be absent or reject to vote (obstruction). For example, sometimes a abstention has the same pratical effect to a no.
What can others learn from this project?
It is one approach to explore the past records of important politicians. Sometimes, some ideological allignments are presumed to be true but they are not based on data.
