Freedom of expression during each president's tenure

Every president since 1991, ranked by how the freedom of expression changed from their first day in office. Politare shows what happened during a tenure; it does not claim the office-holder caused it.

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Tenures

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Results

Order

#	President	In office	Total	Per year
1	Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva	1 Jan 2023 – now	+20.6 points 2022 → 2025	+6.9 points/yr
2	Fernando Henrique Cardoso	1 Jan 1995 – 1 Jan 2003	+0.7 points 1994 → 2002	+0.1 points/yr
3	Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva	1 Jan 2003 – 1 Jan 2011	+0.2 points 2002 → 2010	0.0 points/yr
4	Jair Bolsonaro	1 Jan 2019 – 1 Jan 2023	−8.8 points 2018 → 2022	−2.2 points/yr
5	Dilma Rousseff	1 Jan 2011 – 31 Aug 2016	−12.2 points 2010 → 2016	−2.0 points/yr

Sorted by total, highest first. Every row is indexed to the last count complete before the first day in office ("from" marks a start that had to move because that count had no data, or because the period cut it); Levels are per cent changes, rates are differences in points; "per year" compounds levels and divides rates. Tenures with under 12 months, or under three observations, are left out. points, 0 to 100, V-Dem's 0 to 1 index times 100 · V-Dem Institute, V-Dem dataset v16 (v2x_freexp_altinf): the freedom of expression and alternative sources of information index, the press, academic and private speech and the media's independence, as V-Dem's country experts rate them, with V-Dem's confidence interval; the 0 to 1 index times 100 · Brazil data · as of Sep 2026.