Brazil’s top electoral court president, Kassio Nunes Marques, is reconsidering a plan to award a “seal of accuracy” to polling institutes whose final‑pre‑election surveys come closest to official results, after the proposal drew sharp criticism from polling firms and fellow justices.
The TSE, Brazil’s highest electoral court, oversees the legality of elections, regulates political parties, and adjudicates election‑related disputes. Kassio Nunes Marques, appointed to the bench in 2020 and elevated to the presidency in 2023, has emphasized transparency in electoral processes as a priority of his leadership.
In July, Kassio proposed a seal that would reward polling institutes whose surveys in the final days of a campaign most closely matched the actual vote tallies. Speaking to aides, he said the idea had found little enthusiasm, both among the institutes, which labeled it a mistake, and among his peers on the court.
Polling firms push back
Datafolha, the polling institute owned by the Folha de S.Paulo group, sent a formal letter arguing that electoral polls are “instruments of information and analysis of specific moments in the electoral process, with perishable results determined by their collection period, and not tools for prediction or competitions of accuracy.” It warned that declaring winners and losers based on comparisons between firms using different methodologies and samples “undermines the foundations that support the construction of reliable scientific methods.”
The seal idea surfaced after Kassio ordered the removal of an Atlas/Bloomberg survey that showed a six‑point drop in support for Flávio Bolsonaro following the “Dark Horse” controversy. That episode heightened sensitivities around poll publication and prompted the accuracy‑seal proposal as a way to incentivize conformity to official results.
AI deepfakes seen as more urgent
While the accuracy seal stalls, Kassio signaled that regulating artificial‑intelligence‑generated deepfakes in campaign material is a more pressing concern. Aides said he expects to bring the issue to a plenary vote “in the near future” and is likely to vote for a broad ban on deepfakes. This would reverse an earlier stance in which he had favored prohibiting only critical videos while allowing positive AI‑generated content, an approach sometimes described as “AI for good.”
Beyond the seal debate, the TSE president is studying other measures to increase transparency in polling. One possibility is a new registration model requiring institutes to disclose the voter profile they intend to interview. Another is restricting the use of audio and video in questionnaires, on the grounds that such media could manipulate responses.
Kassio, who will be succeeded by André Mendonça in 2028 and then by Dias Toffoli in 2030, told close associates that he intends to leave a legacy of greater openness in electoral polling, even if the accuracy seal does not survive for the 2026 vote.