Making Sense of Brazil’s Presidential Election

On October 25, Brazilians will cast their votes in a runoff election between current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former President Jair Bolsonaro. Neither candidate won an outright majority in the first round of the election on October 4, although Bolsonaro finished slightly ahead with 47 percent of the vote compared to Lula’s 45 percent. The runoff pits the two candidates from opposing sides of Brazil’s deeply divided political landscape against each other, with the winner set to lead Latin America’s largest democracy and biggest economy.

To learn more, we asked SIS professor Matthew Taylor, an expert on Brazilian politics, about the domestic issues shaping the election and the challenges the next Brazilian president will face.

How has Brazil’s political landscape changed in recent years, and what does this election reveal about the country’s political direction?

Brazil’s electorate has grown much more polarized over the last decade. The end of the commodities boom contributed to an unprecedented period of political turmoil in the 2010s, including a widespread protest movement in 2013, the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff in 2016, and the epic “Car Wash” corruption scandal that unfolded into the early years of this decade. The election of right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro in 2018 revealed that a very significant proportion of the electorate was dissatisfied with the Workers’ Party (PT) of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Rousseff, and the tug of war between Lula voters and Bolsonaro voters has been the central theme of the past three elections.

What issues, voter concerns, or political dynamics have been most important in shaping the race, and what can the first round results tell us about Brazil’s electorate?

This year’s race is unusual in at least three regards. The first is that the Bolsonaro who is running for president is not former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is ineligible to run because he was convicted and is under house arrest, serving time for his role in fomenting an attempted coup in January 2023. Instead, his eldest son Flávio, a senator, is running as his father’s stand-in against the octogenarian Lula.

Second, the race is taking place against the backdrop of a new corruption scandal involving a failed bank, Banco Master. The bank owner’s machinations to avoid his bank’s collapse included hiring Supreme Court justices’ family members, making exceedingly generous payments for a biopic of Bolsonaro, and holding extravagant celebrations attended by a wide range of politicians and justices as well as a coterie of high-priced escorts flown in from around the world. Although Lula does not seem to be personally implicated in the Master scandal, it has tarred some of his leading allies, and the allegations against the Supreme Court seem to have hurt Lula disproportionately, perhaps because as a three-time incumbent, he is seen to have shaped the ethically challenged court more than his opponent.

Third, the Bolsonaro name outperformed in the first round. Early in the race, Lula’s campaign team seemed to welcome the chance to run against Flávio Bolsonaro. Flávio was seen as a political lightweight, particularly by comparison with more experienced right-wing politicians like São Paulo governor Tarcísio de Freitas. Further, the incompetence of Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency, and particularly his haphazard response to the pandemic, contributed to Bolsonaro leaving office with a nearly -17 percent net approval rating. There was also considerable tension within the Bolsonaro camp, with public spats between Jair’s wife Michelle Bolsonaro and Jair’s sons. So the Lula team had many reasons to believe that the election would be – if not a cakewalk – at least a lopsided contest. The Lula team seems to have been taken by surprise, as Lula himself acknowledged on the evening of October 4.

What are the most important differences between the candidates’ policy priorities and vision for Brazil?

The election campaign has been unusually light on substance. Both sides seemed to run more to mobilize their own voters in the first round than to convince undecided voters, and perhaps as a consequence, abstention was high, at 21 percent.

In the second round campaign, some of the key points of contention have been public security, where Bolsonaro has an edge, and Brazilian sovereignty, where the Bolsonaro family’s proximity to Trump is seen as a potential drag on his campaign. But for the most part, policy discussion has been limited, and in a debate on October 18, the two candidates focused more on bashing the other camp’s alleged corruption than on any substantive policy proposals. Further, even if they wished to push specific policy priorities, the candidates have not always been in control of the news cycle. The past week has brought controversy over the supposed downgrading of Lula’s social media posts by Meta, the heavy hand of the electoral court in favor of Bolsonaro, and the continued lurid headlines out of the Master scandal.

Regardless of who wins, what are the biggest challenges the next president will face?

One of the sadder facets of the campaign has been a near complete lack of attention to the central issues the next president will need to tackle. Brazil’s fiscal situation is reaching dangerous levels that will require tough decisions and extraordinary leadership to corral reforms through a Congress that has never been particularly eager for reform. Further, Congress took advantage of the turmoil of the late 2010s to seize greater budgetary powers, which has hamstrung presidents’ ability to implement policy and will limit the next president’s ability to push through difficult reforms. There is also a very strong likelihood that the next president will be consumed by distractions early in their term. Among the most likely is a conflict between Congress and the Supreme Court; it is quite possible that the new right-wing majority in the Senate will impeach a justice or two. Real policy deliberations may well get lost in these power struggles, whether it is efforts to improve the fiscal situation, reform the ethically challenged judiciary, or reach some sort of an accord on environmental issues.

How might the election’s outcome affect Brazil’s democratic institutions and its relationships with the United States, China, and other countries?

The interbranch rivalries mentioned above are already straining Brazilian democracy, and the evident polarization of the election may not help matters. Some Brazilians also express concern that a second term for the Bolsonaro family may allow the Bolsonaros to act more brazenly than they did during Jair Bolsonaro’s first term. Regardless of who becomes president, however, Brazil is likely to remain pragmatic in its relationship with its largest trading partner, China. Relations with the US are more likely to be friendly between Trump and Bolsonaro, but Lula has sought to maintain pragmatic approach to Washington, even in the face of unprecedented provocations from the Trump administration.