The first lesson from Brazil’s election on Sunday is that public opinion surveys severely misfired. Just a few days before the contest, many reported a 15% lead for Luiz Inàcio Lula da Silva over the incumbent, Jair Bolsonaro; and many also predicted a Lula first-round victory. The second lesson is that, far from being a flash in the pan – as many had hoped – the rightwing populist movement Bolsonarismo is an organised political force, and it is here to stay, at least for the medium term.
Bolsonaro finished five percentage points behind the leftist former leader Lula – as he is popularly known. Bolsonaro’s party and its allies also surprised in the legislative elections the same day, winning around two dozen seats in the senate and almost 100 in the chamber of deputies. While a Lula victory still appears likely on 30 October, the thin margin separating the two candidates promises an even more bruising, mud-slinging campaign, and sharpens the risk of post-election violence should the incumbent lose the runoff.
For months, President Bolsonaro had been casting doubt on the integrity of Brazil’s election system – and declaring that if he failed to win, it would be the result of election fraud and involve the complicity of Brazil’s electoral and judicial authority. Those claims were made without evidence and despite audits by independent monitors. Nevertheless, around 30% of Bolsonaro supporters do not trust the country’s electoral system.
Even if Lula should win, and pro-Bolsonaro election protests fizzle out, the former metalworker will have to confront a stumbling economy and a deeply divided electorate, with a large segment of the Brazilian population distrustful of the country’s democracy and political class. None of this bodes well for a country that needs to heal its deep political divisions and pull together for a raft of much-needed economic reforms and difficult decisions.
When Lula first took office in 2003, the world economy was growing, fuelled in large part by China’s double-digit growth. At the same time, Lula’s predecessor, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, had left the Brazilian economy in good shape. Brazil became a major provider of China’s raw materials – everything from iron ore to chicken – and the Lula administration invested the profits to expand social programmes. During his eight years in power, the Brazilian economy grew on average by 4.5%, and around 40 million people moved out of poverty to join a growing – though fragile – middle class.
Twelve years later, Brazil is a different country. In the past eight years, Brazil’s GDP growth has averaged -0.1%5. Even before the 2020 Covid contraction of -3.9%, the South American giant’s economy had been bumping along at under 2% growth. China’s economy has – relatively – cooled off to a projected growth rate of 4.3%% in 2022. It cannot bail Brazil out again. And Bolsonaro’s last-minute efforts to secure his re-election through cash giveaways to the poorest families, along with his Covid stimulus package, have left the Brazilian state with a fiscal overhang.
According to the government’s own projections, the fiscal deficit is expected to hit $12.25bn (£10.8bn) in 2023, requiring future belt-tightening that will crimp Lula’s capacity to expand social programmes precisely at a time when poverty has increased.
Bolsonaro’s term has also been marked by social regression. Nearly 700,000 people have died from Covid (the second highest number of deaths in the world), in no small part because the “Trump of the tropics” peddled false cures and refused to endorse basic practices such as the wearing of masks and social distancing. And according to Oxfam, more than 33 million people in Brazil were going hungry in the six months up to April this year. At the same time, the president’s misogynist, racist and homophobic rhetoric has sharpened social divisions and given freer license for discrimination and even violence.
The political landscape is also more challenging. Brazil’s famously factionalised Congress will be more difficult to rein in due to a reform by Bolsonaro that devolved the executive’s discretionary spending – typically used to log roll votes – to the Congress, thus removing a key tool used by past presidents to build coalitions that could pass legislation.
In contrast to the heady days of the early 2000s, when the charismatic Workers’ party leader rose to the presidential palace, Lula today is a tarnished politician. The $2bn Lava Jato (car wash) scandal, which revealed widespread public-private corruption, became a stain on the go-go days of the Lula economic boom, and the former president spent a year and a half in jail for allegedly having accepted a beach apartment and renovations from the companies implicated in the scheme. While relatively minor compared to the broader scandal, the entire story hangs over the Lula legacy and his appeal. This helps explain the former president’s high disapproval ratings, which were a factor fuelling Bolsonaro’s rise as a supposed outsider politician who would clean up the country’s corrupt political class.
Even in defeat, Bolsonarismo will remain a political force, one that will not limit its power to traditional political institutions and voting. Despite Bolsonaro’s many failings, he retains a strong popular hold on his base. This alliance of what has been termed bible (evangelicals), beef (farmers, many of whom have rolled back environmental protections and contributed to the deforestation of the Amazon) and bullets (gun-toting Brazilians, who, as a result of looser regulations on gun ownership now total over 2 million) will likely remain loyal and mobilised. And his party’s successes in the senate and the chamber of deputies guarantee that the party will remain an obstinate opposition even within the state.
It will be a tough turn in power this time around for Lula, should he win. And with three sons, Bolsonaro’s legacy and coalition is poised to remain a loud, legislatively implacable, popularly volatile and potentially violent opposition.
Christopher Sabatini is a senior research fellow in the Latin America, US and the Americas programme at Chatham House
