Regardless of the outcome of the presidential elections in Brazil, the great political lesson of these elections is that Bolsonarism has thoroughly penetrated Brazilian society and is here to stay. Jair Bolsonaro achieved a much better result in the first round than all the polls predicted: 43% of voters expressed their desire for the current president to continue in the presidency, compared to 48.4% who preferred former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Many analysts are beginning to recognize that Bolsonarism is much stronger than previously believed. “There is a portion of Brazilian society that is very conservative. There is a certain consensus in Political Science that Bolsonaro managed to reconcile these conservative forces. There are people with a more liberal profile and people from the right with a profile more linked to the conservative agenda in the social field. He managed to centralize all this support,” says Carolina Almeida de Paula, a political scientist at the State University of Rio de Janeiro.
In the last legislative elections, also held on October 2 along with the presidential elections, Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party elected 99 representatives in the Chamber of Deputies, which will help create the largest parliamentary group in history. In addition, of the 27 elected senators, eight are Bolsonaristas.
Currently, there is no detailed sociological study of Bolsonaro’s voters. During the last four years, the media inside and outside Brazil have highlighted the most radical facet of this political movement, such as the attacks against the president’s own electronic ballot boxes or the demonstrations against the Supreme Court, which in some cases led to violent scenes in some cities of the country.
However, the team of correspondents of France 24 in Spanish was able to verify in the coverage of the acts in favor of Bolsonaro that the profile of his followers has been changing as the mobility restrictions implemented during the pandemic were lifted. Throughout the entire campaign, he also found that the majority of voters who attended these events have a more moderate conservative profile.
The religious question is essential for some voters to opt for Bolsonaro
Many of them are representatives of the middle class, seduced by the presidential agenda in defense of the traditional family and against corruption. “We always had corrupt presidents and thieves. Bolsonaro ripped out this malignant tumor, this diabolical cancer that we have in our country, which is a rich and prosperous nation. Today our president gave dignity to the family,” said Samuel Oliveira dos Santos, real estate agent and evangelical pastor, at the launch of Bolsonaro’s candidacy on July 24.
“Women are with Bolsonaro because he is honest. He is a man worthy of being in the place where he is”, remarked Selma Maria de Carvalho dos Santos, retired civil servant and wife of Samuel.
We meet this couple again three months later in Bangú, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro marked by daily violence and assaults. Both continue to firmly support Bolsonaro because they feel very identified with the flag that the current president raises daily against the legalization of abortion and drugs, and against the so-called gender ideology.
“I am against abortion. From the moment of conception, from the union of two people, even if a fatality occurs, everything is God’s permission. God is going to mark the course in the way that he deems appropriate”, assures Selma Maria de Carvalho dos Santos.
Samuel, for his part, values the respect that the president shows towards religion. “Bolsonaro is embraced by the pastors in Brazil. He acknowledges that the Lord is God. When Bolsonaro arrives at a church, people want to hug him. And he is not only in the evangelical church. He also goes to Catholic churches. He was recently in the Basilica of the Aparecida, in the annual festival of the Patron Saint. He arrived, and was applauded, some even booed him. This is normal. But he went all the way there,” he says.
Four times a week, Samuel and Selma go to an evangelical church in their neighborhood to pray with other faithful. In Brazil, 31% of the population declares itself evangelical, about 70 million people. Throughout the electoral campaign, Bolsonaro has tried to broaden the support of evangelicals, who in 2018 were essential for his election.
It is very usual that in the evangelical churches of Brazil, the pastors include political issues and position themselves in favor of Bolsonaro, considered “the candidate chosen by God.”
“There is a diabolical partisan political system, governed by Satan and his supporters, very well planned, very well organized. But God opened the eyes of our people,” a black pastor uttered from the pulpit, while a gospel music band played live.
“Do not let us, Lord, be prisoners of communism, of socialism, of all the evil of this system that is trying to corrupt this nation. Father, take our President of the Republic, in the figure of Jair Messias Bolsonaro ”, reinforced Samuel in the role of his deputy pastor.
Some of his voters choose him for the economy and the rejection of Lula’s PT
In addition to the religious appeal, another factor of attraction for the middle and upper classes has been Bolsonaro’s liberal economic program. This is the case of Denise Braga, an architect who welcomes more privatizations and a reduction in taxes for Brazilian companies.
“Bolsonaro has managed to show that there is another way. In the past, everyone was ashamed to say that they were on the right and now it seems that everyone who is on the right is on the extreme right. And it is not true. A party of the extreme right is homophobic, it does not accept foreigners. In my case, it is not. I dont have a problem with that. I just want an organized country, with a strong and free economy, with less state presence and more private initiative, because I think that’s how Brazil is going to take off,” says Denise, who also assures that her business improved during Bolsonaro’s administration and highlights that inflation decreased thanks to government measures.
The consolidation of Bolsonarism was aided by the deep rejection of a sector of society towards the Workers’ Party (PT), founded in 1980 by Lula. Many of those who today repudiate Lula voted for him in the past, such as Robert Kim Blyth. This public official opted for Lula in the presidential elections of 1994, 1998, 2002 and 2006. During Dilma Rousseff’s mandate and after the start of Operation Lava Jato, which investigated the corruption plot linked to Petrobras and culminated in the Lula’s own imprisonment, Blyth became disappointed with the leader of the left “because of his thirst for power.”
“I recognize that initially Lula did very good things, especially for the poorest classes. Today I am against the PT because of the widespread corruption and lack of competition. Today, we see a government that chose the positions for their technical competence. Many of them have not performed well, it is true, but there were no party appointments. With the PT, the appointments did not convey technical security, there was a political game behind it,” says Blyth.
Antipetismo, as the aversion to Lula and his party is known in Brazil, is still very strong. In the polls, the rejection of Lula reaches 41%. But Bolsonaro beats him: 47% of voters affirm that he would never vote for him. Regardless of the outcome, what has become clear is that Brazil will remain highly polarized in the coming years.
