Brazil, Latin America and MAGA

Brian Lehrer (0:10)

Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now, with everything going on in this country, here's a piece of news you may have glossed over this week from south of us, Brazil's presidential election, which is headed to a runoff on October 25th. On Sunday, the right wing challenger finished first with 47 percent of the vote. Flavio Bolsonaro is a senator and as many of you know, the son of former right wing president Jair Bolsonaro, who was convicted of plotting a coup after he lost the last election. Sound familiar? He's also under investigation over money he raised for a film about his father. Running against him is President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the leftist incumbent seeking a fourth term. He was convicted of corruption before he returned to presidency and those rulings were later thrown out on the grounds that the judge was politically biased. He got 45% on Sunday, just a couple of points less than Bolsonaro. Our guest wrote in the New York Times that the scene may feel familiar to Americans. A right wing populist under a cloud of scandal outperforms the polls. The incumbent party is called out of touch and the left is asking what happened. The Times also reports, and this is important context, that right wing candidates have won the last seven presidential elections, seven in Latin America, and that Brazil is the biggest prize left for the right and for President Trump in the region. Joining us now with a closer look at who Flavio Bolsonaro is, who is voting for him, what the United States has to do with it, and more broadly, why in the age of Trump versus US Latinos, is the right rising in Latin America. It's Ana Ionova, New York Times correspondent based in Rio de Janeiro. Ana, thanks for joining us. Hello from New York. Welcome to WNYC.

Ana Ionova (2:04)

Hi, Brian. Great to be here with you. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer (2:07)

So the final poll before the vote from DataFoHA, one of Brazil's most closely followed polling firms, had President Lula at 45 percent and Bolsonaro at 40 percent. On Sunday, Lula got that 45, but Bolsonaro got significantly more than he was polling, supposedly 47 percent. How did the polls miss so much of Bolsonaro's support?

Ana Ionova (2:35)

So, Brian, the polls have been pretty close for the last few weeks. They've been moving up and down, but really most people expected this to be a really tight race. So there was no surprise in that. But I think, you know, the fact that Bolsonaro was able to come out ahead almost, he came close to almost winning outright victory in this first round. And the fact that he was able to convince voters beyond what maybe we saw four years ago with his father and his support base, I think that's where the shock factor came for Brazil.

Just to kind of put this into context for you, he was able to gain votes from millions more than Jair Bolsonaro was able to in 2022 And this is a candidate who, as you pointed out, is, you know, facing a scandal that has been kind of serving as a backdrop to this election. But also he has, you know, a few months ago when he came out as kind of the successor to his father, I think the left was celebrating a little bit, you know. They saw him as a pretty weak candidate, you know, beyond this current scandal around the film about his dad. There's also just like a history of these scandals and, you know, these links to potential corruption.

He was seen as, you know, a less charismatic version of his father. I think a lot of people expected this to be a fairly, you know, modest or weak challenger to the government, right?

Brian Lehrer (4:25)

So what did his appeal turn out to be?

Ana Ionova (4:28)

So I think there's a couple of interesting things that, you know, Sunday's vote revealed about Brazil. I think that, you know, what surprised many people was that we saw Brazil that has changed, and I think the left wasn't paired for some of what they saw, you know, in terms of who voted for him. So I think, you know, there's the sense that lots of working-class people, Brazilians who may be, you know, in the past might have voted for Lula's party, seemed to have, you know, liked Bolsonaro's message, found something appealing in it.

Now, you know, a lot of this has to do from what analysts and experts are telling us, you know, a lot of it has to do with the fact that crime and security are issues that are really front and center on the minds of a lot of Brazilians. You know, a lot of them have this kind of sense that life is more expensive, it's less affordable. Lots of families are in deep debt. So I think there's a couple of factors at play, but I think that the crime and security piece of the puzzle plus kind of the affordability, plus this backdrop of like, you know, corruption scandals that are ensnaring the institutions, I think have weighed on the minds of Brazilians and weighed frankly on Lula, who's, you know, being at, you know, he's been at the helm essentially with this, all of this taking place. So I think it's a little bit of a story about, you know, a right-wing message resonating with people, but it's also about, you know, maybe a right-wing challenger being, you know, offering some solutions that are appealing over an incumbent who's, you know, maybe not delivered in the way that people hoped that he would.