Story
Oct 6, 2026
Ferreira’s Record Vote Draws Both Celebration and a Conservative Rift
Reports agree that Nikolas Ferreira’s vote in Minas Gerais and Lucas Pavanato’s showing in São Paulo marked an unprecedented congressional milestone. They differ in emphasis: one frames the result as a broad right-wing advance, while criticism from within the conservative camp points to tensions behind the headline numbers.
Nikolas Ferreira’s reelection result in Minas Gerais and Lucas Pavanato’s vote in São Paulo were presented as a new high-water mark for Brazil’s federal deputy races, with both candidates surpassing 3 million votes during the count.1
The right-leaning account treated the result chiefly as a shared milestone. It reported that Ferreira had 3,098,411 votes with more than 99% of precincts counted, while Pavanato had 3,035,501 with more than 98% counted — making them the first two federal deputy candidates to clear the 3-million threshold. Both exceeded the 1.8 million votes won by Eduardo Bolsonaro in 2018, according to the report.1 It also placed the result in a wider partisan context: six of the 10 leading candidates were linked to right-wing parties, while four came from left-wing parties.1
A separate account focused less on Pavanato and more on the scale of Ferreira’s standing in Minas Gerais. With 99% of ballots counted, it put Ferreira at 3,119,314 votes and described him as the country’s most-voted federal deputy ever.2 In a hypothetical comparison using only those Minas Gerais votes, the report said Ferreira would have outpolled national presidential candidates Renan Santos, Ronaldo Caiado and Romeu Zema.2 The differing totals appear to reflect separate snapshots of an ongoing count rather than a dispute over the broader result.
Yet the record did not erase friction among conservative figures. Commentator Allan Dos Santos criticized Ferreira over candidate endorsements, writing that Ferreira had excluded Carlos Bolsonaro from his own list while urging voters in Santa Catarina to back him.
3 Dos Santos also amplified a message urging voters not to support Ferreira or candidates he endorses, alleging that he had benefited from the Bolsonaro family name.4
The contrast is sharp: the election coverage depicts unusually large support for Ferreira and Pavanato, while the online criticism suggests that a large vote total does not automatically settle arguments over leadership, alliances or representation within the broader conservative field.