Brasil, sei láOu o meu coração se enganaOu uma terra igual não há— From Tom Jobim’s song, Brasil Nativo

Brazil’s recent presidential election got significant attention from both global and national media outlets, not only because of the size of the country, but also because of premature allegations of electoral fraud. The first round of the Brazilian 2022 general election was held on October 2, and the runoff was held on Sunday, October 30. With 124 million votes counted, former president Lula da Silva (2003-2010) won with 50.9% of the votes, beating incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, who had 49.1% of the votes.

The final results of the elections as published by the official Tribunal Superior Eleitoral, with more than 124 million votes counted.)

Using Cloudflare’s data, we can explore the impact that this election had on Internet traffic patterns in Brazil, as well as interest in content from election-related websites, news organizations, social media platforms, and video platforms.

Here are a few highlights: while the runoff generated much more interest to election related websites (we actually have a view to DNS queries, a proxy to websites), the first round showed bigger increases in traffic to news organizations.

For the candidate’s domains, Lula’s win had the higher impact.

Also: official results came earlier on the runoff than the first round, and spikes in traffic were higher earlier that day (October 30).

(Note: we’re using local times — that means UTC-3, that is related to the more populated regions of Brazil — in this blog, although some charts have x-axis UTC).

Let’s start by looking at general Internet traffic in Brazil.

Using Cloudflare Radar, we can see something that has also been observed in other countries that hold Sunday elections: when most people are getting outside to vote, Internet traffic goes down (in comparison with previous Sundays). We saw this in the two rounds of the Presidential elections in France back in April 2022, in Portugal’s legislative elections in January 2022 and now, in Brazil.

We can also compare Sundays in October. There were five weekends. The two that had elections show the same pattern of lower traffic during the day, as seen in the previous chart. Comparing the two election days, there was a bigger drop in traffic on October 30 (down 21% at around 18:00 local time), than on October 2 (down 10% at around 20:00). Related or not, there was a bigger turnout on the runoff (124 million votes) than on the first round (123 million). Here’s the view on October 30:

And here’s October 2:

A more clear view in comparing the October weekends, and where you can see how the October 2 and 30 Sundays have the same pattern and different from the others three of the month, is this one (bear in mind that the x-axis is showing UTC time, it’s -3 hours in Brazil):

If we look at the main network providers (ASNs) in Brazil, the trend is the same. Claro (AS28573) also shows the drop in traffic on October 30, as does Telefonica (AS27699):

Here’s Telefonica:

We observed a similar impact from the October 30 runoff election to traffic from different states in Brazil, including São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do Norte, Minas Gerais, and Bahia.

When we look at the share of Brazil’s Internet traffic from mobile devices during October, we find that the highest percentages were on October 2 (first round of the elections, 66.3%), October 9 (66.4%) and October 30 (runoff election, 65%). We’ve seen this in other elections, an increase in mobile device usage, so this seems to follow the same trend.

This chart also shows how mobile device usage in Brazil is at its highest on the weekends (all the main spikes for percentage of mobile devices are over the weekend, and more on Sundays).

Now, let’s look at anonymized and aggregated DNS traffic data from our 1.1.1.1 resolver. This data provides a proxy for traffic to, and thus interest in, different categories of sites from users in Brazil around the election.

Brazil has government websites related to elections, but also its own Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (Electoral Superior Court) that includes a website and app with live updates on the results of the elections for everyone to check. Looking at those related domains and using mean hourly traffic in September as a baseline, we can see that the October 2 first round spiked to 16x more DNS queries at 20:00 local time. However, DNS query traffic during the runoff election peaked at 18:00 local time on October 30 with 17.4x more DNS traffic as compared to the September baseline.

We can look more closely at each one of those two election days. On October 2, traffic had its first significant increase at around 17:00 local time, reaching 15x more requests to election-related domains as compared to the September baseline. This initial peak occurred at the same time the polling stations were closing. However, the peak that day, at 16x above baseline, was reached at 20:00 local time, as seen in the figure below.

On Sunday, October 30, 2022, the pattern is similar, although the peak was reached earlier, given that results started to arrive earlier than on the first round. The peak was reached at around 18:00 local time, with request traffic 17.4x above baseline.

As seen in the figure below, Lula first led in the official results at 18:45 local time, with votes from 67% of the polling stations counted at that time. Around 20:00 Lula was considered the winner (the peak seen in the previous chart was at that time).

For Lula-related domains, there are clear spikes around the first round of elections on October 2. A 13x spike was observed on October 1 at around 21:00 local time. Two notable spikes were observed on October 2 — one at 16.7x above baseline at 09:00 local time, and the other at 10.7x above baseline at 21:00 local time. During the October 30 runoff election, only one clear spike was observed. The spike, at 16.7x above baseline, occurred at around 20:00, coincident with the time Lula was being announced as the winner.

For Bolsonaro-related domains, we observed a different pattern. Increased traffic as compared to the baseline is visible in the days leading up to the first round election, reaching 10x on September 30. On October 2, a 8x spike above baseline was seen at 18:00 local time. However, the two most significant spikes seen over the course of the month were observed on October 16, at 20x above baseline, a few hours after the first Lula-Bolsonaro television debate, and on October 25, at around 20:00, at 22x above baseline. That was the last week of campaigning before the October 30 runoff and when several polling predictions were announced. The second and last Bolsonaro-Lula debate was on October 28, and there’s a spike at 22:00 to Lula’s websites, and a smaller but also clear one at 21:00 to Bolsonaro’s websites).

With official election results being available more rapidly, DNS traffic for Brazilian news organization websites peaked much earlier in the evening than what we saw in France, for example, where more definitive election results arrived much later on election day. But another interesting trend here is how the first round, on October 2, had 9.1x more DNS traffic (compared with the September baseline), than what we saw during the runoff on October 30 (6.1x).

The way the results arrived faster also had an impact on the time of the peak, occurring at around 19:00 local time on October 30, as compared to around 20:00 on October 2.

At 19:45 local time on October 30, Lula was already the winner with more than 98% of the votes counted. After 20:00 there was a clear drop in DNS traffic to news organizations.

On October 2, it was only around 22:00 that it became official that there would be a runoff between Lula and Bolsonaro. Peak request volume was reached at 20:00 (9x), but traffic remained high (8x) at around 21:00 and until 22:00, like the following chart shows:

Cloudflare Radar, our tool for Internet insights, can provide a unique perspective on how major global or national events impact the Internet. It is interesting to not only see that a real world event can impact Internet traffic (and different types of websites) for a whole country, but also see how much that impact is represented at specific times. It’s all about human behavior at relevant moments in time, like elections as a collective event is.

Past examples of this include important presidential elections, the Super Bowl, the Oscars, Eurovision, never before seen views of the universe from a telescope , the holiday shopping season, or religious events such as Ramadan.

You can keep an eye on these trends using Cloudflare Radar.

A Cloudflare está muito feliz de anunciar o nosso mais recente data center: Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. Este é o nosso oitavo data center na América do Sul, e com ele a rede da Cloudflare se expande por 116 cidades em 57 países. Este lançamento vai acelerar e proteger mais de seis milhões de sites e aplicações web pelo Brasil, também provendo redundância para o nosso data center em São Paulo. Provendo acesso à nossa rede para mais parceiros através do Ponto de Troca de Tráfego (IX-RJ), nós estamos chegando mais perto dos usuários da Internet em todo o Brasil.

Rio de Janeiro plays a great role in the history of Internet in Brazil. In 1988, the National Laboratory of Scientific Computation, headquartered in Rio de Janeiro connected to the University of Maryland via Bitnet, a network to exchange messages. The next year, the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro also connected to Bitnet, becoming the third institution (with São Paulo State Foundation for Research Support) to have access to this technology.

O Rio de janeiro tem papel central na história da Internet no Brasil. Em 1988, o Laboratório Nacional de Computação Científica (LNCC), conectou-se à Universidade de Mariland através da Bitnet, que era uma rede que permitia o envio de e-mail entre as instituições acadêmicas. Em 1989, a Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro também se conectou na Bitnet através de outra universidade americana, se tornando a terceira instituição Brasileira a se conectar na Internet (a FAPESP também já estava na rede).

_CC BY-NC 2.0 image by Lau Rey_

Today, the city of Rio de Janeiro is very well connected. Internet access can be found all over, and better connectivity can boost entrepreneurship. In some Favelas (slums), the residents are creating their own ISPs, providing Internet access to some users that big ISPs are not able to reach.

Hoje, a cidade do Rio de Janeiro é muito bem conectada. Acesso à internet pode ser encontrado em todo lugar, inclusive incentivando o empreendedorismo. Em algumas favelas os próprios moradores criaram seus provedores de internet via Wi-Fi, e estão proporcionando a inclusão digital em áreas onde os grandes provedores não chegam.

We have an additional eight datacenters in progress across Latin America. If managing the many moving parts of building a large global network interest you, come join our team!

Nós temos mais oito datacenters a caminho na América Latina. Se você se interessa em gerenciar uma rede de alcance global, venha fazer parte do nosso time!

-The Cloudflare team

Che, ya estamos en Argentina! It is con placer that we announce our 32nd data center in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Our Buenos Aires data center is our 5th in Latin America following deployments in Santiago, São Paulo, Medellin, and Lima. As of this moment, CloudFlare is now mere milliseconds away from nearly all of Latin America's 300 million Internet users.

Argentina may be better known as the land of bife and malbec, but it is also home to a thriving tech community, including several well known start-up accelerators such as Startup Buenos Aires, Wayra and NXTP Labs (a CloudFlare customer!). At CloudFlare, we know a thing or two about the challenges of building a technology company, and we're proud to support the fast delivery of Internet applications for users in Argentina, as well as those who create them.

Although not commonly known, the title of the famous song from the musical Evita originates from an epitaph on a plaque honoring Evita Peron, and roughly translates as: "Don't cry for me Argentina, I remain quite near to you." Unfortunately, when it comes to the Internet, there is plenty of reason to cry (or at least sniffle), as the majority of online content consumed within Argentina (and all of Latin America) must be transported from quite far away.

Prior to our deployment in Buenos Aires, delivery of the nearly 2 million Internet applications on CloudFlare to the majority of Argentina's 35 million Internet users occurred through CloudFlare's data centers in Newark and Miami (200 and 170ms, respectively, of RTT away from Buenos Aires), with the remainder served in-region from our other data centers in Latin America. In both cases, multiple International carriers are involved in delivering traffic from our network to the ultimate end user. Also keep in mind that this issue is not CloudFlare specific. The vast majority of online content consumed in Latin America is delivered from even further away in the various geographies in which it is hosted (Europe, Asia, Oceania, etc.), with even more severe latency.

At play are two overarching, and related, dynamics. The first relates to the domicile of online content. It is estimated that upwards of 80-90% of online content accessed in Latin America is hosted outside of Latin America. This also includes locally produced content, as the cost of hosting is often less expensive in the United States and Europe. Consequently, to access online content Internet users within Latin America must travel longer distances, which means a slower Internet. This is where CloudFlare steps in allowing any individual or enterprise to easily localize their content across our global network. In regions where ISPs/networks are highly interconnected, this typically means that one or more CloudFlare's data centers is very close by. However, in regions with less local interconnection, such as in Argentina (and Latin America at large), the closest point of interconnection may be quite far away (as in the case above with traffic routing to Newark and Miami).

This is where the second dynamic comes in: interconnection. For many ISPs in Latin America, it is less expensive to purchase Internet connectivity in the United States (e.g., delivered across a submarine cable), than to purchase that same access locally. As a result, interconnection between ISPs/networks frequently occurs outside of the region, which means that content can only be accessed outside of the region (even if it is hosted locally!). Fortunately, much progress is being made to foster network interconnection locally. This progress takes the form of increased competition between providers on price and quality of service, a policy environment that recognizes the importance of local interconnection, and the development of local IXPs (Internet exchange points).

If you're on CloudFlare, your content is, as of today, available locally

It is this last development—the formation of IXPs—that is greatly facilitating the local interconnection of networks and the exchange of content. As part of our Buenos Aires deployment we've established connectivity with CABASE, an association of IXPs in Argentina. CABASE's association includes numerous interconnected IXPs throughout Argentina, allowing ISPs from Mendoza to La Plata to exchange traffic within the country. CABASE, like PTT.br (an IXP in Brazil in which CloudFlare is also a participant) is a great model for Internet connectivity in the region. Our participation in the IXP allows us to cache our customers' content locally, and exchange it with ISPs across the entire country. Say hasta luego to Newark and Miami (sorry Will Smith).

For those that read our previous post about our Düsseldorf deployment, we encouraged readers to guess our next three datacenter locations. Only one guessed Buenos Aires, but two more locations are at large. Stay tuned!

"Chile may have scored a CloudFlare data center first, but at least we’re still in the Cup”

Brazil is home to not only the most successful national football team in history (Pentacampeão), but also to the most technologically advanced World Cup ever hosted. From vanishing foam and goal-line technology, to the biological passport and the thermally-bonded design of the Adidas Brazuca, FIFA has finally (if not begrudgingly!) entered the modern age. In honor of this great football nation, and their advance to the semi-finals, it is only fitting that we “ice the cake” with CloudFlare’s 27th data center in São Paulo.

As this year’s 32 qualifying teams will attest, the journey to Brazil wasn’t easy. To make our own journey happen we had to work with multiple hardware vendors to achieve certification from Anatel (the telecom regulator of Brazil), coordinate dozens of shipments, and patiently wait for the Receita Federal do Brasil (the Brazilian tax authority) to receive, inspect, inspect again (and again), and then release our equipment to its new home in the NAP do Brazil.

Our Prize? Not quite the US$35 million in winnings that will greet the World Cup champions, but we do get the satisfaction of increasing the performance of the 2 million+ sites using CloudFlare for Brasil’s 100 million Internet users. This launch also means that the millions of web sites and mobile apps hosted in Brazil can now use CloudFlare to increase the performance and security of their online presence both in Brazil and around the world. Se você é do Brasil, nunca houve um uma melhor oportunidade para inscrever-se na CloudFlare!

São Paulo is our second data center in Latin America following our deployment in Chile. And even though only one more data center remains in this latest round of expansion, we're just getting started. Curious to know what's next? Spoiler: If you are Colombian (we're sorry for your loss!), you won't be as disappointed after reading the next blog post. Stay tuned!