Here comes the son? Brazil’s election tips rightward

Economist Podcasts

The episode examines Brazil's rightward political shift after populist Flávio Bolsonaro led the first round of its presidential election, defeating incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva amid

Key takeaways

• Flávio Bolsonaro secured the most first-round votes in Brazil's election, making him the favorite to win the runoff against incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
• Record voter abstention hit 33 million out of 158 million eligible voters, reflecting widespread discouragement and anti-incumbency sentiment toward Lula's Workers' Party.

Main topics

• Brazilian presidential election
• Flávio and Jair Bolsonaro political comeback

Notable quotes

"The election felt like a funeral."

Conclusion

Listeners gain a clear understanding of how voter fatigue and structural

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) you Speaker 3 (0:03) The Economist. Speaker 3 (0:09) Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm Jason Palmer. And Speaker 8 (0:14) I'm Rosie Bloor. Speaker 3 (0:19) Today on the show, why license plate readers are angering Americans, and a glimpse into being a nanny for the uber-rich. Speaker 3 (0:33) First up though... Speaker 3 (0:43) The results are in from Brazil's general election, and in them is something of a surprise. The populist right challenger, Flavio Bolsonaro, got the most votes. His supporters partied, and he sounded triumphant. Speaker 3 (1:01) We told you last week it was going to be tight, but that was in part because of voter apathy. The choice was between Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, the incumbent aging lefty who's lost the confidence of the country, and Mr. Bolsonaro, son of the now-imprisoned, coup-staging Jair Bolsonaro, and, like the rest of his family, a big fan of Donald Trump. Neither won outright. So what's still at stake is not only how Brazil will be run, but how it will fit into a whole continent drifting toward the authoritarian right. Speaker 6 (1:36) I went to downtown Rio where there were a lot of Lula supporters, some of them crying, people were visibly upset because the results were much better than expected for Flavio Bolsonaro, Lula's right-wing challenger. Speaker 3 (1:54) Ana Lankas is the Econist's Brazil bureau chief. Speaker 6 (1:57) One young voter said to me that the election felt like a funeral. Speaker 4 (2:03) Several people Speaker 6 (2:04) told me that they were just voting in the lesser evil. There was not a whole lot of enthusiasm. At least three people I spoke to on the street today said that the main sentiment was desânimo, Speaker 4 (2:17) which means discouragement. And Speaker 6 (2:22) now Brazilians will head to the polls again. Since neither candidate got more than half of the votes, the vote will be decided at the end of the month. Speaker 3 (2:32) Now, you told us last week that it was an unpredictable election, but nevertheless, Mr. Bolsonaro did perhaps far better than expected. Speaker 6 (2:41) He did far better than expected. And then the polls had predicted. So leading up to the election, as I said last week, Lula and Bolsonaro have been alternating as frontrunners in the final stretch, which made it very. hard to predict the outcome. And there was also a lot of abstention and a lot of undecided voters. So this was always going to be quite a volatile race. But even so, there's no way you can't classify this as a huge win for Bolsonarismo. A year ago, the populist right-wing movement founded by former president Jair Bolsonaro was in the dumps. Bolsonaro was sentenced to 27 years in jail for plotting a coup after losing his bid for re-election. against the current president, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, in 2022. And the expectation was that Brazil would be able to get over the polarization that has plated for almost a decade. But instead, the Bolsonaro clan had a brilliant night, and they look set to make a comeback through Flavio, Jair's oldest son. Others in the Bolsonaro family were also really big winners last night. Speaker 3 (3:43) How do you mean? Speaker 6 (3:44) So the Bolsonaro clan is made up of... telenovela-like characters. Michelle Bolsonaro is Jair's third wife. She's much younger. And Brazilians love her. She's a God-fearing evangelical Christian. She has plastic surgery. She's good-looking. And she's going to become a senator, along with Carlos Bolsonaro, who's Flavio's middle brother. And the youngest son, Jair Renan, is inexperienced and very young. He's 28. He's going to become a federal congressman, together with Jair Bolsonaro's brother. So that's a lot of names for you in there. But the point is the Bolsonaro clan had a triumphant night. Speaker 3 (4:23) And you told us last week that the younger Bolsonaro's signature policy program is simply to pardon the elder Bolsonaro. Speaker 6 (4:32) Yeah, that's right. There are other proposals linked to reducing crime and corruption, for example. But Flavia's credentials aren't so strong on either front because he's being investigated for alleged corruption and he has been investigated for alleged ties to Rio de Janeiro's criminal underworld. I will say, though, that Flavia Bolsonaro denies any allegations of wrongdoing. He also has some proposals on reducing Brazil's deficit. But his main thing is to basically pardon his father and his brother, Eduardo, who's living in South Exxon, Texas. and to impeach the Supreme Court justices that have harmed his family. Speaker 3 (5:11) And so given the momentum that he apparently has now, what do you see happening in the runoff? Speaker 6 (5:16) Flavio is favored to win the election now, because since Brazil returned to democracy in 1985, no candidate who lost the first round of the election has won the runoff. And several of the other smaller candidates in the race who got around 8 % of votes lean more towards the right than towards the left. There are also other indications that there's a kind of structural right-wing shift happening in Brazilian society because right-wing parties, and particularly Bolsonaro's Liberal