Elections Series: Brazil — Presidential
Authors: Jaclyn Leaver and Matthew Lisiecki
On October 30, voters in Brazil will go to the polls to cast their votes in the presidential runoff between incumbent Jair Bolsonaro and former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (known as Lula). In the first round of this election on October 2 (which also included races for congress, governorships, and federative unit legislatures), Lula led the field with 48.4% of votes, with Bolsonaro receiving 43.2% and nine other candidates receiving votes. No candidate received over 50% of votes, triggering the upcoming runoff.
To prepare for the upcoming runoff, EGAP assembled a panel of four Brazilian political scientists in order to understand the issues at stake, describe the political context of Brazil, and discuss expectations based on the first round of voting and subsequent polling. The panel consists of EGAP members Natália S. Bueno (Emory University), Umberto Mignozzetti (UC San Diego), and Cesar Zucco (Fundação Getulio Vargas), along with Victor Araújo (University of Zurich).
As the runoff between incumbent Bolsonaro and his challenger, former president Lula, approaches on October 30, what are the major issues at stake?
Cesar Zucco (CZ): Bolsonaro’s campaign has sought to make the election about corruption, family values, and religious freedom. Lula has focused mostly on the economy, but has also stressed his pro-poor record in social policy and education. However, the real major issue at stake is the future of Brazilian democracy. There is little doubt that in a second term, Bolsonaro would continue his barrage of attempts to undermine constraints on the power of the president and, this time around, he would have conditions to be much more successful. The rest of the world should take note that this election will probably also partially define the future of the Amazon and Brazil’s contribution (or lack thereof) to the fight against global warming. While this issue is somewhat incidental to the election, it is perhaps the most pressing one for humanity.
Umberto Mignozzetti (UM): The main issue, in my view, is the institutional stability of Brazilian democracy. Given Bolsonaro’s behavior in the past, it is safe to say that he will move forward with the project of dismantling the institutional apparatus that checks his powers. For instance, conditional on a second Bolsonaro term, I would not be surprised by a third Bolsonaro term, which would represent a dismantling of the constitutional term limits.
Moreover, the judiciary is the only institutional power currently checking Bolsonaro’s decisions. This has made him highly vocal against the Supreme Court, and the main agenda of most anti-democracy movements in Brazil is a Supreme Court closure. Conditional on a Bolsonaro win, in the best-case scenario, he will appoint two Supreme Court justices, having appointed four out of eleven justices. In the worst-case scenario, he will change the constitution to increase the size of the Supreme Court to fifteen, as proposed by the current Vice-President and future Senator Hamilton Mourão. This could prove catastrophic for the Brazilian democracy.
Looking at the other side of the spectrum, although the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) has a few radical members that would welcome this type of institutional dismantling, the vast majority of the party seems to be against it. Historically, the last four PT governments have not threatened the democratic process in any way, and there is abundant evidence that the PT strengthened accountability institutions. Additionally, the fragmented Congress and the number of structural problems Lula will face may deter any radical agenda. Even in the worst-case scenario, democracy seems safer under a Lula government. In summary, this election is a referendum on the democratic system, with one side threatening democratic instability.
How would you describe Bolsonaro’s term as president? What would you define as key features of his presidency and how has he been received by different segments of the Brazilian public? Do you anticipate that a second Bolsonaro term will be a straightforward continuation of his first, or do you expect new directions were he to win reelection?
Victor Araújo (VA): In an effort to appease the Brazilian and international business sector, in the first act of his campaign in 2018, Bolsonaro announced as his Minister of the Economy, Paulo Guedes. An economist by training, Guedes has a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and worked in Chile during Pinochet’s dictatorship. During his first moments in government, Guedes sought to replicate the Chilean model in Brazil by proposing a change in the pension system and a tax reform. Both reforms were approved in the Brazilian Congress, but only after several rounds of discussion that softened their impacts.
The Covid-19 pandemic forced Bolsonaro’s government to change directions and transition from an economic liberal agenda to a more interventionist and Keynesian approach. Facing millions of hospitalizations and deaths (Brazil is second, just after the US, in the relative number of deaths caused by Covid-19 by country) and an alarming increase in poverty levels, the government had to take some action. At first, Bolsonaro and Guedes were against establishing an emergencial monthly cash transfer for families in need. However, upon learning that legislators (mostly from the opposition) started drafting a proposal to implement a temporary basic income program to mitigate the financial impacts of the pandemic, Bolsonaro changed his mind.
After back-and-forth negotiations between the executive and the legislature, the government agreed to establish a monthly cash transfer (Auxílio Emergencial) of 1,200 BLR (approximately $200) to more than 38 million families. From May to December 2020, the Brazilian federal government invested more than 550 billion Reais (around $110 billion) in social spending to cover this program. Consequently, the poverty rate dropped by 8%, and for the first time since we have data available, Brazil’s Gini index fell below 0.50. The Auxílio Emergencial accounted for 86% of this inequality reduction. In other words, ironically, and almost unintentionally, Brazil experienced its lowest level of inequality in the past five decades under Bolsonaro’s administration.
Perhaps not coincidentally, Bolsonaro has been campaigning to convince voters he was the father of Auxílio Emergencial. In an additional effort to claim credit for poverty reduction and to improve his electoral performance in the Northeast (Brazil’s poorest region), Bolsonaro also changed the name of Bolsa Família–a conditional cash transfer program created under Lula’s first term (2003-2007)–to Auxílio Brasil, and increased the value of its payment. The results of the first round of elections indicate that this strategy did not pay off. Even if Lula loses the election in the second round (at this point a real possibility), this will happen in spite of the Northeast’s continued rejection of Bolsonaro (and support for Lula) even after Bolsonaro’s efforts to reach this voter base through cash transfer policies.
Lula was Brazil’s president from 2003 to 2010. Is his platform in this election a return to the policies from his previous terms? Or, is he running on a platform with a new political agenda?
CZ: Lula has not presented a great deal of detail on new policies. This is somewhat understandable given that during his two terms in office a number of highly salient government programs and initiatives were introduced, much of which have since been reversed or disfigured. Lula has proposed modifying a very blunt “fiscal ceiling”, a limit on expenditures that was introduced after PT was removed from office; he has also mentioned the creation of a cabinet position for indigenous populations and programs to help shift food production into more sustainable methods, and coordinating policies with the other Amazon countries (which would be truly new). Beyond this, his other proposals are mostly to reinstate past policies. He has proposed reorganizing PT’s flagship social programs, such as Bolsa Família, Minha Casa Minha Vida (a housing program), Mais Médicos and Farmácia Popular (health related programs), and Prouni and Fies (higher education programs). Lula has also pledged to return the BNDES—the national development bank—to a more active role, to bring back into existence the planning ministry, advisory councils, and national policy conferences, and to strengthen environmental protection agencies that have been weakened under Bolsonaro.
Lula was thought to have a chance to win outright in the election on October 2. While he received the highest percentage of votes, he fell short of the 50% required to avoid a runoff. Meanwhile, Bolsonaro appears to have received a greater share of votes in the first round than polling suggested. How do you interpret these results? What constitutes Bolsonaro’s base and what explains their persistent support for him in spite of repeated scandals that have affected his presidency?
Natália S. Bueno (NSB): Both Bolsonaro and Lula received healthy vote shares in the first round, but there are a few features that are relevant predictors for support for Lula or Bolsonaro. Geography is one important aspect; Lula’s support is the largest in the northeast while Bolsonaro’s base is largest in the center-west and southern states. The most populous states of the southeast are important battlegrounds, but Bolsonaro had wider margins than anticipated in Rio de Janeiro and in São Paulo, and Lula’s margin was smaller in Minas Gerais. Place, of course, is correlated with other aspects. Demographically, we find that lower-income, lower levels of formal schooling, afro-Brazilian, and female voters tend to favor Lula relative to Bolsonaro. That said, a political scientist Fernando Meireles, examining the votes aggregated at the voting booth level, finds that Bolsonaro has lost some support, relative to 2018, in voting booths with a higher concentration of high education voters
In addition to region, socioeconomic status, gender, and race, I would highlight two additional factors: religion and social policy. I leave religion as a separate question, but we have the open question of the effects of an increase in the payments for Auxílio Brasil and the creation of additional benefits close to the election date. This is a very tricky question—while these short-term boosts in well-being and local economies may create some change in voter behavior at the margins, it’s hard to say if it’s an important determinant in election outcomes.
UM: Regarding the electoral result, I was initially surprised. Still, after studying closely the ballot results, the polling data, and considering that Bolsonaro has been actively using his official powers, two patterns emerged. First, saying that voting is compulsory in Brazil is a bit of a stretch. By law, yes. However, the punishment for not voting is to pay around a $0.65 fee, with minimal consequences if one decides not to pay (for context, this is cheaper than a one-way bus fare in São Paulo). This low cost made absenteeism amount to more than 20% of the votes in the past few elections. Few scholars study turnout in Brazil, assuming that since it is compulsory, there is no turnout issue, but this is wrong. The political scientist and pollster Antonio Lavareda, when comparing the election results with his polling institute, pointed out that no polls considered the 20% absenteeism. The absenteeism was exceptionally high among Lula voters. Bolsonaro voters, upon seeing all final polls giving Lula a likely first-round win, turned out massively. Lula supporters, on the other hand, may have waited to see the outcome or even not turned out to vote because the cost of voting may adversely affect the poor. This could be potentially aggravated by the fact that this has been one of the most violent elections in Brazilian recent history. For instance, Felipe Nunes detected that Lula voters feared declaring their vote. It is safe to assume that they could have also been afraid of turning out to vote, especially in a situation that seemed like a first-round win for Lula.
Second, Bolsonaro has been using his position in power to tilt the scale in his favor, which may be working. During the pandemic, he experienced an increase in popularity in the second half of 2020, coinciding with the disbursement of COVID relief. This taught Bolsonaro that Brazilian voters are sensitive to these lump-sum transfers. During this year, Bolsonaro proposed the transfers to poor voters, truck and cab drivers, subsidized credit loans for poor voters receiving the government cash transfers, and housing financing that would consider future unemployment compulsory savings. The last two were proposed between the first round and the run-off. His government evaluation has been increasing in the last few weeks, and with the inflation somewhat under control (-0.73% in the last month), he is gaining momentum against Lula. This is a significant problem for Lula’s campaign since it increases the perceived costs of switching candidates, especially for poor voters.
What role has religion played in this election? Are there specific religious groups that Bolsonaro and/or Lula have been courting? How did these groups vote in the October 2 election and what are the expectations for how they will vote in the runoff?
VA: In 2018, 70% of voters attending evangelical churches voted for Bolsonaro in the second round of the presidential elections. Public opinion surveys (e.g., Americas Barometer, LAPOP) suggest that the 2018 elections only consolidated a process that started in the mid-2000s: The electoral support for Lula’s PT party has been in decline among evangelicals, with the majority of them consistently voting against the PT in presidential elections held since 2006.
As first identified by Samuels and Zucco (2018), antipartisanship, more than partisan attachment, is a good predictor of how Brazilians vote in presidential elections, and this antipartisanship is mainly driven by feelings against the PT (i.e., Antipetismo). Recent evidence indicates that Antipetismo is highly prevalent among pentecostal evangelical voters (but not among historical protestants).
This explains, to a much greater extent than previously acknowledged, why the PT has been losing traction among the poor. Evangelicals are roughly 35% of voters in Brazil, and 65% of evangelicals are pentecostal. Crucially, the majority of pentecostals are women, non-white, and low-income voters who live in precarious conditions in urban regions of Brazil.
In the first round of the 2022 elections, the PT managed to secure the majority of votes in the Northeast, the region with the highest concentration of Catholics in Brazil. In the other regions—where evangelical churches fiercely compete with Catholic churches for followers—Bolsonaro beat Lula in the first round. For example, in Rio de Janeiro, the Brazilian state with the highest concentration of pentecostal evangelical voters, Bolsonaro won in 70 of the 92 municipalities.
According to predictions, Christian evangelicals will overcome Catholics and become the largest religious group in Brazil by 2040–a demographic shift driven mainly by the solid and persistent growth of pentecostal evangelicals, who are typically more conservative regarding moral issues than traditional evangelicals.
In an effort to increase his support among this large subset of voters, with a few days left before the second round of the presidential elections, Lula’s campaign released a letter committing itself to several crucial points in the moral agenda of evangelical churches. This ambiguous electoral strategy shows how salient religious identity has become in Brazilian politics. It also reinforces that issues such as inflation, poverty, and inequality are now insufficient to persuade a substantial share of voters, who seem to prioritize other issues and dimensions when casting their ballots.
This election is considered momentous not only within Brazil but also internationally, given its potential repercussions for the environment. What’s the feeling in Brazil right now as the second round vote approaches?
CZ: The environment is not a central topic in this election even though it is probably the most important one. Bolsonaro frames his policies in terms of “respecting the agrobusiness” and promoting the “right to self defense”. These terms are euphemisms for making more land available for agriculture, cattle ranching, and mining, which in turns implies deforestation (mostly through burning down forested areas), and either explicitly limiting national parks, protected areas, and indigenous lands, or doing so implicitly by weakening environmental protection agencies (such as IBAMA and ICM-BIO) and the system of protection of indigenous groups (FUNAI).
Lula’s government had been very successful in bringing into place or strengthening a series of policy instruments (some of which were introduced under Cardoso) that led to a strong and sustained reduction in the pace of deforestation in the Amazon region. Lula eventually parted ways with Marina Silva, the Amazon’s stalwart, and his handpicked successor Dilma Rousseff, was considerably less pro-environment. Lula’s running mate, Geraldo Alckmin, is also relatively close to agrobusiness. That said, Marina and Lula have recently reunited, and she has been actively campaigning for him. While there exists some uncertainty to the extent of Lula’s commitment to environmental issues, there is no doubt about Bolsonaro’s disdain for environment protection, global warming, protection of original populations, and his embrace of frontier culture.
UM: Given the topic’s urgency, it is interesting that both candidates hold considerably opposed views. Lula has a track record of successful environmental action. At the beginning of his first term (2003-2006), deforestation in the Amazon was at its peak. Lula rallied around 10 ministries and used several administrative tools, empowered indigenous people, issued sanctions, and credit restrictions to non-compliant farmers, to lower deforestation. It was an astonishing success: the years that followed show a yearly decrease in deforestation.
The negative Lula trend stopped after approving the 2012 Forestry law under Dilma Rousseff (Lula’s successor). This is because the 2012 law was more permissive to farmers that previously had cut down the forest. It proposed an amnesty for about 90% of the farmers that had committed any environmental felony, intending to curb future forest loss and promote better relations between the government and the agribusiness. It may have ended up empowering previous felons to keep misusing their land.
The increase in deforestation entered into overdrive during the Bolsonaro government. Bolsonaro directly or indirectly incentivized previous felons, suggesting that it was OK to burn up the forest. He also dismantled most of the enforcement apparatus, resulting in 42% fewer notifications and 89% fewer fines collected when compared with the previous government. At the peak of the Amazon fires in 2019, he accused Greenpeace of burning down the forest. He also highlighted what he calls a “colonialist mindset” by the French President, interfering in Brazilian matters. Bolsonaro, and mainly his former Ministry of Environmental Protection, Ricardo Salles, see the problem as a dichotomy between preservation and economic prosperity. In their view, the apparatus put together by Lula was hindering the economic viability of the region, and is responsible for the fact that the region has the lowest HDI in the country.
Ahead of the October 2 election, reports indicate that Bolsonaro supporters spread accusations of electoral fraud and that President Bolsonaro, himself, was planning to contest the results if he did not win outright. What role has disinformation and “fake news” played in this election, and how might it shape what happens in the runoff?
NSB: Misinformation is widespread in the sense that sizable shares of the electorate believe factually false claims about political groups, and about parts of Brazilian electoral institutions, such as the electronic ballots. Yet we do not have much evidence regarding its electoral effect and whether misinformation actually changes people’s minds and vote choices or whether it may actually just reinforce pre-existing beliefs and attitudes. That said, there are key differences between 2022 compared to 2018. Importantly, the public, the platforms (WhatsApp, mainly), and the institutions supervising elections are more aware of the issue and they are taking steps in trying to limit the spread of misinformation. However, misinformation about the electronic ballots and about the integrity of the electoral system has been rampant. It remains to be seen whether this type of misinformation will actually convert into action in case Bolsonaro loses the runoff. I think that, in line with existing research, that this type of misinformation is unlikely to swing voters to the Bolsonaro camp, but it can be effective, at least at the margins, in spurring supporters into action to challenge an electoral result that is not their preferred outcome. Furthermore, there have been interesting reports from organizations that monitor WhatsApp groups suggesting that misinformation is gaining momentum in the run-up to the elections, and broadening misinformation’s scope connecting presidential candidates to religious and criminality issues.
What can be learned from the down ballot races that took place in the first round? Were there any surprises? What is the composition of the Congress shaping out to be and how do you see that affecting the presidential term of either Lula or Bolsonaro?
CZ: The electoral surprises came from some gubernatorial elections and several senatorial races. Almost all of these “surprises” were favorable to Bolsonaro. The outright reelection of the governor of the state of Rio, the surprise first-place finish for Tarcísio de Freitas, Bolsonaro’s candidate for governor of São Paulo, in addition to senatorial victories of high profile bolsonarista candidates in Rio Grande do Sul, Paraná, São Paulo, Brasília, and in Rio Grande do Norte contributed to the sense that Bolsonaro did much better than expected.
In the very fragmented lower house, the president’s party (PL) finished first with 16.6% of the nationwide vote and Lula’s’ party (PT) came in second with 12%. Following the 2022 elections, fragmentation in the Brazilian lower house fell for the first time in decades, after steep increases over the last two electoral cycles. The effective number of parliamentary parties will be just under 10 at the start of the next Congress, a level not seen since Lula was president. This was mostly due to recent changes in the electoral system in combination with earlier changes to campaign finance.
Our estimates indicate that, with its new composition, polarization in Congress has increased considerably, continuing a trend that started after Lula left office. Polarization has, thus, increased in the last four cycles but following the 2018 election, centrist parties became smaller, and parties on the right larger. Despite Bolsonaro being more of an extremist than Lula, his (average and weighted) distance to Congress will be smaller than Lula’s, due to the growth in the right. And Lula’s distance to Congress, if he wins, will be much larger than when he took office in 2002.
The implication of the combination of larger and fewer parties with more polarization and a weaker center depend on who wins the election. If Lula is elected, he will face greater chances of gridlock than when he last served as president. Lula is a seasoned deal-maker, but it is unclear whether members of right-wing parties will jump on his bandwagon in exchange for resources, as in the past, or, attempt to bring down the government, particularly because Congress has taken on a greater role in the management of the budget during Bolsonaro’s first term and following changes in rules and procedures implemented since the Dilma presidency.
If Bolsonaro wins, in contrast, he will face a much more compliant Congress, particularly relative to the first two years of his first term. At that point, the president of the lower house actively resisted Bolsonaro’s more outrageous demands. Since Arthur Lira, the current president, took over, Bolsonaro established a modus vivendi that has outsourced much of the budgetary decisions to Congress in exchange for complacency with other initiatives. Bolsonaro has not accomplished much in terms of legislation, but much of his agenda was infra-legal. With a more compliant Congress, Bolsonaro has hinted that he could seek legislative changes to limit the judiciary’s power and alter its composition and begin turning his vague “values” agenda into law.