“The problem with Lula’s campaign is that he doesn’t have a project, Bolsonaro does, but it’s horrible.”

First modification: 03/10/2022 – 19:07

Brazilians went to the polls this Sunday, October 2, to elect the president of the Republic, deputies, governors, state deputies and a third of the senators.

Christopher Ventura, Research Director of the International Research Institute of France, IRIS, specialist in Latin America

Elcio Ramalho, head of the Brazilian service of Radio France International

Y Lamia Oaulalou, former correspondent for the newspaper Le Fígaro in Brazil, author of the book “Dios te Ama, la ola evangelica”, a detailed study on the weight of evangelicals in Brazil

They analyze the results of these elections, a crucial scrutiny where not only democracy in Brazil is at stake, but also part of the future of Latin America.

All the polls gave Lula da Silva an advantage of at least 10 points, although he obtained six million more votes than Bolsonaro, the far-right president managed not only to reduce the difference that separates them to 5 points, but also to obtain almost two million more votes than in the 2018 elections. Christopher Ventura considers that “it is necessary to reflect more on the studies of these polling institutes given that, once again, they have been incapable of thoroughly analyzing the sentiment of our societies. We can imagine more a hidden vote in a sector of the electorate, probably more in the right and center right; probably the electorate that did not go with Ciro Gomes and Simone Tebet. In the end, this vote shows a strong advance of conservatism in Brazil and certainly of the right”.

“The result of the polling institutes is interesting because they are wrong with the results of the right and the extreme right, but not with those of Lula. It is very rare that the polls have problems in identifying the results of Bolsonaro and also that of the governors in other regions, he estimates on his own. Elcio Ramalho

The results of the vote leave a Congress dominated by the right, in which the representatives of the extreme right will be very well represented. It should be noted that 87% of the current deputies stood for re-election. The novelty is that we will have a Chamber of Deputies much more to the right. For example, Bolsonaro’s party, the Liberal party, goes from 77 to 98 deputies – almost a fifth of the members of the Chamber of Deputies -, it has been many years since it was able to be a political party. There will be fewer games but they will come out stronger”

Jair Bolsonaro has the majority support of the evangelical electorate – I remember that these are more or less 65 million people, against 106 million who say they are Catholic… And at the same time he is the poorest How can we understand that despite the increase in poverty that all Analysts confirm, that section of the electorate continues to vote for Bolsonaro?

“We must remember that the 2020 census was not done, the government did not want to do it, so we cannot know exactly how many evangelicals there are, which can also influence the result. I think that in addition to a hidden vote, it is a vote of shame”, he advances Lamia Oulalou. “Those people who with Bolsonaro died 700 thousand people during the pandemic, that three million Brazilians are hungry every day, but who still want to vote for him because we are in a climate of hatred. But the most important thing we learned yesterday is that Bolsonarism is very established in Brazil, it has deep roots. Brazil is much more conservative than it was supposed to be, and now it can only be something that comes from outside, it is something that is going to stay whatever the result of the election is.”

“I think most of the poor voted for Lula – notably the northeast and the outskirts of big cities – but where Lula has lost a lot of support is with the small middle and lower classes. For many reasons, there is the role of the evangelical churches, where a scandalous campaign was carried out because it is totally prohibited, and in the end the issue with social classes like the middle class is that they did not gain as much from Lula, because Lula has a speech of the past over all The big problem with Lula’s campaign is that he doesn’t have a project, Jair Bolsonaro has a project, horrifying, but he does.”