In winning 48 per cent of the first round vote, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has performed roughly in line with expectations – but Jair Bolsonaro, in winning 43 per cent, gained between five and ten percentage points more than pollsters had predicted.
With other right-wing politicians also doing unexpectedly well, the balance of power within both houses of the legislature is shifting sharply rightwards so, as one local commentator put it, Lula’s performance was a ‘left-wing island in a right-wing sea’.
It shows that even if Lula does win the run-off, his task of governing a divided and polarized country is challenging, especially with recent falls in commodity prices, the strength of the dollar, and the slowdown in the economy of China, Brazil’s largest trading partner.
Brazil is facing big fiscal pressures, with a nominal deficit this year expected to be more than six per cent of economic output. Bolsonaro’s government spent heavily in the run up to this election on social welfare and subsidies in a bid to win over voters.
A country still moving to the right
Although Brazil experienced a political earthquake in 2018 when Bolsonaro came to office at the head of an alliance between traditional conservatives and his own hardline backers, the new congress will be even more right-wing in its orientation.
This suggests the conservative wave which began with the recession and corruption scandals of the mid-2010s is yet to fully run its course. And some high profile ‘Bolsonaristas’ were surprisingly successful.
Eduardo Pazuello, an army general who performed disastrously as health minister during a devastating pandemic for Brazil, was returned as one of the most heavily voted for deputies in Rio de Janeiro. Damares Alves, a socially conservative women’s minister, and Hamilton Mourão, an army general who served as deputy president, won senate seats.
Bolsonaro candidates also won the governorship of Rio de Janeiro and his former public works minister is on course to triumph in a run-off in the state of São Paulo.
Overall, the first round vote was a bleak day for moderates and the left. The reformist centre-right Social Democratic Party of Brazil (PSDB) – which implemented the monetary and fiscal reforms to stabilize Brazil in the 1990s and early 2000s – suffered a further decline, reduced to only 14 lower house deputies and losing control of São Paulo state government for the first time in 16 years.
An alliance of left-wing parties connected to Lula’s own Workers Party won only fractionally more seats than in 2018 meaning that, if elected, Lula will be dependent for congressional support on self-serving centre and centre-right parties of the so-called Centrão – meaning ‘big centre’ – which since 2020 have backed Bolsonaro. Right-wing and centre-right parties will enjoy a majority in the lower house and have an even bigger advantage in the senate.
Predicting populist support is increasingly difficult
This matters beyond Brazil because the election is proving to be yet another where opinion polls are badly failing to predict the outcome.