Editorial

Second Electoral Round: Rearranging Pieces Ahead of the First Debate

This Sunday, October 16, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro will meet for the first debate of the second round of voting. Considering that it will be just the two of them this time, and how acrimonious their brief interactions were in previous debates, this will almost certainly be a deeply contentious encounter. This debate will be important for several reasons. For one thing, it will be broadcast at primetime, beginning at 8:00 pm as opposed to most of the first-round debates, which started so late that they lasted until past midnight. An earlier start time should translate into more viewers. The other reason the debate will be so important is that the first round of voting was closer than almost anyone had expected. Still, Lula bested Bolsonaro by a comfortable margin, something no challenger has managed to do against a sitting president since incumbents became eligible to seek reelection in the 1998 election. Sunday’s debate will likely be appointment television for the most devoted supporters of Lula and Bolsonaro, but also for millions of Brazilians whose votes may be more or less up for grabs. 

With a face-off between the candidates looming, the campaign this week was punctuated by a few notable episodes. On Wednesday, October 12, Bolsonaro visited the Basilica of Our Lady of Aparecida in São Paulo state to celebrate Brazil’s patron saint. Bolsonaro supporters, however, got rowdy, loudly shouting the president’s name and verbally assaulting members of the press in the middle of the solemn religious ceremony. Images of the incident circulated quickly online, feeding into the narrative that Lula’s Workers’ Party (PT) and allies have been pushing insistently since the first round of voting, namely, that Bolsonaro uses religion for political ends and exhibits none of the traits that Christians should value. This is part of a broader strategy to chip away at Bolsonaro’s overwhelming lead among Evangelical voters.

The president’s support appears largely to be consolidated among a hard core of support. With that in mind, the PT strategy has been to prevent Bolsonaro’s growth in area of the country where he did not do well. The most glaring region in that regard is the Northeast, the part of Brazil where Lula was born and that has voted heavily for his party for over a decade and a half. Bolsonaro has visited the Northeast, clumsily attempting to emphasize that life did not improve for people there under Lula even as footage of him making disparaging jokes about locals came to the fore online. Lula, for his part, has doubled down on the Northeast, leading a massive rally in Salvador, for example. The former president is clearly intent on maximizing his advantage as much as possible to compensate for Bolsonaro’s strength in the South and Southeast.

Indeed, a strong performance in the São Paulo governors’ race for Fernando Haddad, Lula’s former education minister, mayor of São Paulo, and PT presidential nominee in 2018, could also serve to counteract Bolsonaro’s appeal in the largest and wealthiest state in the country. In the first round, Haddad did worse than polls indicated he would against Tarcísio Gomes de Freitas, Bolsonaro’s chosen candidate for the governorship. But Haddad received strong reviews for his debate performance against Tarcísio, and polls now show he has a chance of mounting a comeback against Bolsonaro’s infrastructure minister. Doing so could help consolidate support for Lula in a state that is crucial to Bolsonaro’s hopes of securing a second term. 

Highlights

• MILITARY SILENCE. The Brazilian military task force, which requested electoral authorities to analyze the integrity of the national voting system, did not disclose the results of its parallel inspection of the first round of voting. The Brazilian press reports that it did not find any inconsistencies; and, since the military have been used by incumbent Jair Bolsonaro (Liberal Party) in a campaign to allege the unreliability of the electronic voting machines, the armed forces may be waiting to see if Bolsonaro wins or loses the runoff to disclose findings that would weaken the President's antidemocratic agenda. The Federal Court of Accounts (TCU) has requested documents from the Ministry of Defense and may trigger an investigation into the military's involvement with the questioning of the electoral system.

• ATTACK ON THE SUPREME COURT. On Sunday, October 9, Bolsonaro revealed that allies suggested he should increase the number of justices in the Supreme Court if he is reelected, according to remarks broadcast on social media. An idea once implemented by the Brazilian military dictatorship, the expansion of the Supreme Court proposed by Bolsonaro and his key allies may not be possible due to an immutable clause. Specialists see the Constitution as an obstacle to increasing the number of ministers. The interpretation, however, is not conclusive, leaving open the possibility that should Bolsonaro be reelected, he may implement this plan.

• "CULTURAL JANONISM". Satanism, cannibalism, Freemasonry, and abortion guided the electoral debate on social medias during the first week of the campaign for the second round. In this context, the figure of congressperson André Janones (Avante) and his leadership in Lula's online campaign provoked polemics. The so-called "cultural Janonism" is a reference to the congressperson's approach to politics in which he has subverted elements of the Bolsonaro campaign’s aesthetics and communication tools: crude montages, prints without context, memes, and rapid diffusion, in addition to assuming an aggressive and proactive posture. While critics point that even contents that are proven to be false or distorted have been used, Janones argues that there is no effective alternative to neutralizing Bolsonaro’s digital guerrilla campaign by trying to "puncture the progressive bubble" and reach those in the conservative camp.

• POLLING DATA. According to the latest IPEC survey, released on Tuesday, October 11, Lula (Workers’ Party) remains at 51 percent, and Bolsonaro (Liberal Party) polls 42 percent of the votes. Bolsonaro widens his distance from Lula among Evangelicals and improves interviewees’ evaluation of his government, but the general picture in the runoff is stable. According to the survey, in the Northeast Lula has 70 percent and Bolsonaro, 26 percent. In the Southeast, Lula has 48 percent, and Bolsonaro, 44 percent. The survey was carried out across the country and 2000 voters were interviewed. Among Evangelicals, Bolsonaro’s support is 63 percent, and Lula is 31 percent. Among Catholics, Lula polls at 60 percent, and Bolsonaro at 34 percent. For income up to one minimum wage, Lula has 65 percent support, while Bolsonaro has 28 percent. For people earning up to five times the minimum wages, Bolsonaro polls 62 percent, while Lula has 31 percent support among those polled.

• QUAEST/GENIAL POLL. The Genial/Quest poll released on Thursday, October 13 shows former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva with 49 percent of those polled, while Bolsonaro has 41 percent. Among those surveyed, 6 percent intended to spoil their ballot, while 4 percent still remained undecided.

Feature Article

Bolsonaro May Lose, But His Impact is Here to Stay

By Rafael Ioris

Sunday, October 2nd was a day of great expectation in Brazil. Based on most electoral polls, it seemed that former president Lula da Silva would gain more than 50 percent of votes and thus end the presidential election in the first round. That is what most people expected. Although there were reports of long lines in many precincts, the day unfolded normally. But when the initial counts stated coming in, most people were astounded by the fact that Bolsonaro, the extreme right-wing president, was ahead of Lula by a good margin.

The initial surprise quickly turned into apprehension, though many voices tried to assuage Lula’s supporters that most of the initial votes were coming from areas in the country where the incumbent candidate was expected to do well. Still, some started having a déjà vu feeling of what happened in 2016 when Trump stunned everyone by a most unexpected victory.

In the end Lula came in ahead of Bolsonaro but by a margin much smaller than expected: 5 percent rather than the 10 percent predicted by most polls. So, what happened in Brazil? And what can we expect from the second round taking place on October 30th, which is likely to determine the fate of Latin America’s largest country for the next several years, with echoes throughout the region, and even beyond?

First of all, it is becoming a recurrent fact that pollsters are having a hard time predicting the electoral behavior of rightwing candidates in many parts of the world, as demonstrated not only in Brazil this month and in the United States in 2016, but also in the United Kingdom during the Brexit vote and more recently in France. But if this seems to be a general trend, perhaps related to the fact that many feel shy about declaring a vote they feel pollsters will likely see as politically incorrect or even reproachable, in Brazil there are additional complications that need to be understood.

For one, Bolsonaro did not provide the funds for the national census, which was supposed to have taken place in 2020. As a result, there is no precise way for polling agencies to map out the actual composition of the country’s population, particularly in terms of a dramatic shift in religious affiliation known to have taken place in the last 10 year. Secondly, and this seems to be particularly acute in the Brazilian case, at times under instructions of the conservative religious leaders, many voters refuse to declare a vote for their extremist candidate, thus diminishing the accuracy of polls that had been correctly designed.

Although Lula may still be the favorite to win the election, the latest polls indicate that his lead seems to be very tight. In fact, electoral results throughout the county in the first round of the elections indicate that the rightwing social shift that Bolsonaro unleashed in the last few years, which we could call Bolsonarismo, is stronger than expected. Moreover, there is a very real possibility that he may even manage to get reelected to further his authoritarian agenda paradoxically in a country that until not too long ago seemed to be on verge of becoming a consolidated democracy.

To be sure, Bolsonaro obtained almost the same number of votes he ended up having when he won four years ago. This is certainly a surprising feat for a president that mismanaged the pandemic to the point of Brazil being the second most affected nation by Covid-19, in terms of lives lost. In so doing, he managed to halt the momentum that Lula had going into the first round and proved that his fake news network on social media (WhatsApp, Instagram and YouTube), responsible for his victory in 2018, is still very effective, something that will certainly provide him with strength going into the second round.

All in all, Bolsonarismo has indeed become a defining feature of Brazilian politics for the time being. Many of his closest associates – like Damares Alves, Minister of the Family, and a clear extremist in socio-cultural matters, and Eduardo Pazzuelo, a general and former Minister of Health during the Covid debacle – were elected to Congress with huge margins, proving the broader appeal of the president’s agenda and aggressive rhetoric.

Likewise, though some important victories on the progressive front occurred (e.g. the election of indigenous leader Sonia Guajajara and trans women Erika Hilton and Duda Salabert, all elected to Congress), central themes of Lula’s platform, such as gender equality and environmental protection, are not central issues for close to half of Brazilians as they are to the other half. Moreover, if Bolsonaro was the alleged outsider (hence holding the appeal of being a novelty) four years ago, this time around he ran on record of economic devastation for poor Brazilians, disdain for democratic institutions, militarization of public administrative positions, and, above all, a massive public health crisis. 

But rather than voting based on this evidence though, many Brazilians are voting based on cultural wedge issues efficiently manipulated, once again, by Bolsonaro’s camp. In fact, in many parts of the country, Bolsonaro’s extreme conservative views on social issues, aggressive rhetoric, and authoritarian propositions (e.g. closing of the Supreme Court) are more than ever understood as much-needed solutions for complex problems many Brazilian face daily.

And even if Lula ends up winning, the deep divide that now defines Brazil will add to the many challenges he will face in government. So, Bolsonaro may lose, but his impact is here to stay.

Rafael R. Ioris is Professor of Latin American History at the University of Denver and a non-resident Research Fellow at the Washington Brazil Office. 

Feature articles express the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or WBO.