A justiça eleitoral como interventora no domínio econômico: críticas e possibilidades sobre a regulamentação do mercado de pesquisa eleitorais via resoluções do TSE

Abstract

The Electoral Court exercises a normative function through its Resolutions, which, among various topics, also issue rules for the registration and dissemination of electoral research. It is investigated whether the actions of the Electoral Court on this topic through its Resolutions end up regulating the private market involved and whether, through this activity, it intervenes in the economic domain. The electoral opinion poll market was chosen as the object of study, mainly due to the dissemination of such statistical studies, an inescapable reality of the Brazilian political system, a fact expressly mentioned by the Federal Supreme Court in the judgment of Direct Unconstitutionality Action n. 3741. This ruling established that access to statistical studies is an extension of the right to free and plural information and, consequently, its dissemination cannot be restricted or prohibited by law. In this context, it was initially sought to rescue essential concepts about Fundamental Rights and their sphere of protection, as well as the characterization of free and legitimate voting in this category and the impacts that electoral polls have on their exercise, demanding state action in their regulation.To this end, bibliographic research was carried out on the essential concepts highlighted above, followed by qualitative and quantitative methodology on the impacts of Electoral Justice regulations on the electoral research market. Afterwards, the economic impacts of the regulations made by the Electoral Court on private markets will be dealt with greater specificity, initially dealing with traditional notions about state intervention in the economic domain and then drawing a comparison with the regulatory activity of the Electoral Court in its Resolutions. In the same chapter, before addressing the context of the electoral research market, it was dealt, as an example, with Resolution No. 23,732/2024 and its possible contribution to the formation of monopolistic competition in the provision of paid promotion services for political-electoral content on the internet. Next, the impact and efficiency of the Regulation of the Electoral Research Market by Resolution 23,600/2019 and its update on the training of market agents were evaluated using a quantitative methodology with the collection of data, by sampling, from research institutes registered in the PesqEle System and its cross-referencing with data from the Federal government's Redesin system, as well as investigating whether and for what reasons there are difficulties in monitoring faithful compliance with the imposed rules and whether such rules prove to be sufficient. for the intended purposes. Lastly, possibilities for improving the performance of the Electoral Court as an intervener in the economic domain in this specific market were investigated.