With Bolsonaro down and not out, buckle up

Officially, leftist former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won the first round of Brazil’s tense presidential race on Sunday, with 48% of votes. In fact, current leader Jair Bolsonaro was the one who emerged victorious, beating the predictions of pollsters and boosted by the success of several key congressional and gubernatorial allies, who demonstrated the resilient support for his far-right platform. In absolute terms, he garnered more votes than four years ago, when he eventually
triumphed as an unlikely outsider.
The unexpected success for Bolsonaro, a second wind, suggests the route to the runoff on October 30 will be bumpy. And even if he is defeated, as still seems likely given high rejection rates among voters, Bolsonarismo looks set to outlast him.
Lula, who led Brazil from 2003 through 2010, has been the protagonist of an incredible comeback story over the past months. Last week, polls suggested the possibility of an outright win in the first round for the former president, something that has happened only twice before. That outcome would have been particularly remarkable: Although the one-time metalworker can count on enduring popularity among poorer segments of the population, who associate him with a period of plenty, he is deeply disliked by others who blame him for dragging Brazil into a tangle of grimy graft investigations. (He served time in jail, though his convictions were later annulled.)
He didn’t, in the end, pull off the expected feat. Instead of widening, what Brazilian pollsters call the “alligator’s mouth” closed. Lula came within forecasters’ margins of error and out in front — still noteworthy for a country where no incumbent president has yet lost his reelection bid. He won Minas Gerais, the bellwether state that every ultimately successful candidate has taken. Yet the race between the two top contestants — a choice, for many, between undesirable choices — proved uncomfortably tight. The “voto envergonhado” or the hidden “embarrassed vote,” came out for Bolsonaro in populous regions like Sao Paulo, while minor candidates and low turnout nibbled away at Lula’s lead. Although voting in Brazil is mandatory, more than one in five eligible Brazilians didn’t vote, the highest abstention rate for this stage since 1998.
Now Lula goes into the final stretch of campaigning in front, but on the back foot. Bolsonaro’s ability to push the vote to a runoff in defiance of polls, by contrast, has given him an extra reason to question official forecasts. He has already claimed to have “defeated a lie” on Sunday. Thus empowered, he will do what he can to gain ground, stir up trouble, or both, especially if the second round result looks tight and security forces prove loyal to him.
This morning, it’s hard not to be anxious for the fate of Latin America’s largest democracy and the region’s heftiest economy.
Most obviously, Bolsonaro — a man who has struggled to deliver on promises of economic reform, badly mishandled a pandemic that resulted in nearly 690,000 deaths and sowed deep divisions with his unabashed authoritarian tendencies — is still in with a chance. Candidates do not tend to recover after losing the first round of voting. But this race is an unusual one, and he’ll seek to widen support by doubling down on corruption allegations.
Indeed the one certainty going into the next four weeks is that the bitter rhetoric, campaign violence and threats of defiance will worsen. Already late on Sunday, the incumbent president’s supporters were throwing around unsubstantiated accusations of fraud and wrongdoing on social media, while he himself reverted to hints of Lula’s supposed allegiance with the far left including Venezuela, a dog whistle to supporters. “I understand the desire for change,” the president said after the vote, proclaiming his confidence in a win. “But in this second round we will show (voters) that the change they are looking for might be for the worse.”
Then there’s the strong showing by Bolsonaro’s high-profile former ministers and populist allies in congress and at the state level, suggesting that his brand of conservative, Trumpian far-right politics will live on. It has displaced a more moderate right in Brazil, reducing the chances of the deep structural economic changes the country needs, impossible without a wide alliance. (This wasn’t altogether a repeat of 2018: Although son Eduardo Bolsonaro won re-election to the Chamber of Deputies, he went from more than 1.8 million votes, a record, to less than half that.) Even if Lula ultimately wins, the strong showing in congress for the president’s party will test his parliamentary mettle.
Perhaps the most worrying detail on Sunday, though, was the high level of apathy and discontent. Among those who did vote, more people cast blank or void ballots than backed the third-ranked candidate, Simone Tebet.
It’s easy to overdo the pessimism. Every election in Brazil since the advent of democracy has been a spectacular feat, as this vast nation votes and reports results within hours. For months, democratic institutions like the Supreme Court have proven bulwarks against presidential adventurism, and allies inside and outside Brazil have been reassuringly vocal. In the early hours after the vote, at least, candidates behaved with decorum.

—Bloomberg

Clara Ferreira Marques is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and editorial board member covering foreign affairs and climate. Previously, she worked for Reuters in Hong Kong, Singapore, India, the U.K., Italy and Russia