A Datafolha poll released on Saturday (12) measures the damage done to the two justices at the center of the crisis in the STF, Brazil's Supreme Court. 34% of respondents say Justice Alexandre de Moraes should be temporarily suspended from his post, and 28% say he should face impeachment. For his colleague André Mendonça, 37% support a temporary suspension and 12% impeachment. In Brazil, an impeachment case against a Supreme Court justice is tried by the Senate.
Datafolha, Brazil's best-known polling institute, heard 2,002 people in 125 cities from Tuesday (8) to Thursday (10). The margin of error is two percentage points and the confidence level is 95%. The survey was commissioned by the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo and by Globo, and is registered before the electoral court under code BR-01833/2026. According to Folha, fieldwork ended before key developments on Friday (11).
How the crisis began
The crisis broke on September 1, when Mendonça, the justice reporting the Banco Master case at the STF, released a Federal Police report with messages sent by former banker Daniel Vorcaro to a contact that investigators attribute to Moraes. The document cites a 131 million reais contract between Vorcaro and the law firm of Moraes's wife, and messages in which the banker asked whether he should flee the country to avoid arrest. Folha calls it the gravest institutional crisis in the court's history.
Moraes then said there were signs of irregularities in Mendonça's conduct, including possible political favoritism, and asked that his colleague be investigated in the so-called fake news inquiry. Court President Edson Fachin removed the request from that inquiry and stripped Moraes of its rapporteurship. The dispute also reached the Federal Police: on the 8th, Mendonça suspended director-general Andrei Rodrigues and intelligence director Leandro Almada; Justice Flávio Dino ordered their reinstatement the next day; Fachin suspended both decisions, leaving Rodrigues in office. In a submission to Fachin on Friday (11), Rodrigues denied that the police had monitored Mendonça and said the reports were produced regularly and sent to Moraes under a court order.
What else the poll found
Other questions in the same survey gauge the court's reputational damage. According to the news site g1, 76% of respondents say STF justices have too much power and 77% agree that people trust the court less than in the past. Even so, 71% say the STF is essential to protect democracy. The crisis has also reached the presidential race: for 85% of voters, the accusations against Moraes have not changed their vote intention; for Mendonça, the figure is 86%. Folha reports that 66% of respondents say they know about the case involving Moraes.
The next chapter comes on Tuesday (15), when Fachin has called an extraordinary session of the full court to discuss the Federal Police report and the handling of Moraes's case. On Saturday, according to g1, Fachin rejected a joint trial of the two justices and scheduled a session on Mendonça for September 23. The Prosecutor General's office has asked the court to annul the Federal Police report.