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Voters from the Rocinha favela are waiting for the polls to open in Rio de Janeiro on 7 October. (Marcelo Sayao / EPA-EFE / REX)
The two best presidential candidates were poles apart – right, the leader of PSL (liberal social party), Jair Bolsonaro, won 46% of Sunday's vote; on the left, the PT (Workers' Party) candidate, Fernando Haddad, was behind with 29%. In the absence of a majority, the Brazilian electoral rules provide for a second round. The Brazilian president and the 14 polls of the governors will be determined on October 28th.
[Is Brazil’s presidential front-runner Jair Bolsonaro the Latin American Donald Trump? Nope.]
Calling the October 7 elections to the presidency, state governors, federal legislators and state legislators is a euphemism: thirteen state governors won majorities in the first round, the national legislature has experienced a huge turnover , and many politicians have lost their jobs and the legal protections that go with it.
Here are some takeaways:
1. Brazilians are fed up with the political establishment
After seven terms in the Brazilian House of Representatives, Bolsonaro has gone from the backbench of Congress to the presidential candidate, after the widespread rejection of Brazilian politicians. The success of Bolsonaro Sunday effectively ended the left duopoly of the Brazilian Social Democrat Party (PSDB), a center-right party, the main presidential candidate of all Brazilian elections since 1994.
The PSDB candidate garnered only 5 million votes on Sunday (4.8%), which contrasts sharply with the 51 million votes he had amassed in the 2014 defeat. Marina Silva (from the center-left party Rede), which ranks third in the last two elections, manages only 1%. The catch-all party MDB, Temer's party, got only 1.2%. Ciro Gomes, center-left, took third place with 12.5% of the vote.
2. Brazil may have the most fragmented legislature in the world
The legislature has seen an even greater purge. The Senate will be filled with political newcomers, as only 8 of the 33 incumbent senators have been re-elected. Many influential brokers, including 7 members of President Temer's BMD, the current president and vice-president of the Senate and influential politicians of PSDB and PT, have not been re-elected.
More than 53% of the members of the Chamber of Deputies have been returned, the highest rate since 1994, with the PT, PSDB and MDB having suffered the largest losses. Many newcomers come from small, right-wing parties. PSL Bolsonaro went from a deputy to the second party with 52 legislators (10% of seats in the lower house).
A record number of parties (21 versus 16 in 2014) were elected to the Senate, while the House will now have 30 parties (compared to 28 in 2014 and 16 in 1994). This will certainly make governance more difficult for Brazil's next president. Prominent Brazilian political scientists have declared the post-authoritarian political system "dead" or "collapsed".
3. Regional divides remain strong
The election results show the persistent polarization of Brazilian politics. Bolsonaro climbed right, denouncing the left and the PT as a criminal organization plundering the state, defending the legacy of the Brazilian authoritarian regime, fiercely rejecting redistributive and identity politics and ignoring democratic norms while proposing a firm approach to crime. The PT has sought to preserve the legacy left by former President Lula and has not publicly acknowledged its share of responsibility for the current crisis in Brazil, nor abandoned its choking on the left side of the political spectrum.
Haddad quickly rose in polling stations when he was named Lula's successor when the electoral courts banned the former president from coming forward as a result of his arrest for corruption. But the fear of the rise of Haddad has further stimulated Bolsonaro. As a result, the remaining candidates are also those with the highest rejection rates from other voters.
[Brazil’s most popular politician, Lula, won’t be on the October presidential ballot. Here’s what comes next.]
This polarization overlaps the historical north-south divides of Brazil. Bolsonaro operated 2,848 municipalities in 17 states in southern and western Brazil, areas that are traditionally more developed. It has clearly won in states where the human development index is higher, like Santa Catarina (where it garnered 65% of the vote).
Haddad has won only nine states, including eight in the northeastern part of the country, a relatively less developed region that had strongly supported the PT in the recent past. This raises debate as to whether the recently acquired NP base in the north-east supports them because of partisan and policy-based links based on policies such as cash transfers – or whether the poorest voters in Brazil continue to reward charismatic men who use links with federal resources to fund local sponsorship mechanisms. Unsurprisingly, negative historical stereotypes of the region have resurfaced.
These socio-economic divisions also occur within states. Preliminary analysis by Fernando Meireles shows that municipalities with a higher proportion of poor voters chose Haddad. Although this relationship is maintained in all regions of Brazil, a higher proportion of these municipalities are in the northeast.
[Think all the political excitement in Brazil is at the national level? Think again.]
4. We can not be sure, but the situation is likely to worsen before it improves.
Without an epic return, Bolsonaro will likely win the second round, in part because it represents an ideological alternative closer to the anti-center-right vote. Bolsonaro also fueled popular frustration by attacking the legitimacy of Brazil's formal and informal democratic institutions, using social media to challenge the media, question the neutrality of electoral authorities and the integrity of the country's e-voting system.
The recipe for Haddad's victory would necessarily involve a grand coalition to fight the authoritarian trend of Bolsonaro. To do this, Haddad would need the support of the left-wing parties in the center as well as the center-right – the candidates that the PT has severely attacked. This is not impossible, but Haddad will have to make serious concessions to convince these party leaders to join him.
There is little indication of what a Bolsonaro government would look like. He has no experience as a leader and has never had a neophyte party. Following an assassination attempt in the election campaign, he escaped presidential debates. In his absence, his vice-presidential candidate, a retired army general, proposed a solution to Fujimori. autogolpe. Although Bolsonaro recently disavowed these statements, he has a well-established history as an illiberal democrat.
Economic recovery is important for Brazilians, but Bolsonaro has an unpredictable relationship with its main economic adviser. October 28 winner faces pension reform, tight government spending and other tax issues left by Temer government – but also restores public confidence in government after four years of scandals and political upheavals.
Jorge Antonio Alves is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Queens College, CUNY. Follow him on Twitter @ jaalves11.
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