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The clash between the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro and the former left-wing president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has left a taste of victory for the former and of bitter waiting for the latter. Lula obtained 48.4% of the votes against 43.2 for Bolsonaro, forcing a ballot on October 30. Listen to our special broadcast on the result of the first round.
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. And at Radio France International we brought together three specialists in that country to analyze the results of a crucial election for Brazil and Latin America.
All the polls gave Lula da Silva an advantage of at least 10 points, and although in the end he obtained six million more votes than Bolsonaro, the current president managed not only to reduce the difference between them to 5 points, but also accumulated almost two million votes. more than in the 2018 elections. Christope Ventura, director of research at the French International Research Institute (IRIS), believes 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, “estimates Elcio Ramalho, head of the Brazilian service of Radio France International.
The results of the vote leave a Congress dominated by the right and the representatives of the extreme right will be very well represented. 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, Ramalho insists. 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 not managed to be a political party for many years. There will be fewer parties but they will come out stronger “
Jair Bolsonaro has the majority support of the evangelical electorate, some 65 million people, compared to 106 million Catholics. And at the same time, it is the poorest sector. How can we understand that despite the increase in poverty, this 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,” advances Lamia Oualalou, former correspondent for the newspaper Le Fígaro in Brazil and author of the book “God Loves You, the Evangelical Wave.” “Despite the fact that with Bolsonaro 700 thousand people died during the pandemic, that three million Brazilians are hungry every day, they still want to vote for Bolsonaro because we are in a climate of hatred. But the most important thing we learned on Sunday is that Bolsonarismo is very established in Brazil, that it has deep roots. Brazil is much more conservative than was supposed. It is something that is going to stay regardless of the outcome of the election.”
“I think the poorest people voted for Lula -notably in the northeast and the outskirts of big cities-, but he lost a lot of support in the lower middle classes, among other reasons because of the role of the evangelical churches, where he campaigned despite to be forbidden. Lula lost support because he has a speech from the past, to promise that they will return to the situation of 20 years ago. The big problem with Lula’s campaign is that he doesn’t have a project, Jair Bolsonaro has a project, horrifying, but he does.”
