He Bolsonarism it cracks. It does not break, but it has a first crack. Whatever happens in the second round on October 27, the Brazilian far right will hardly once again demonstrate unbreakable unity around Jair Bolsonaro. He coach The evangelical Pablo Marçal, who energized the campaign in São Paulo with an unimportant and penniless party (the Partido Renovador Trabalhista Brasileiro, PRTB), is the new outsider. Marçal, slipping through digital loopholes outside electoral laws and appealing to workers in the informal economy dreaming of entrepreneurship, wrests from Jair Bolsonaro his self-proclaimed messiah status. And he seems to have found the formula for the revival of the extreme right. After seeing how justice closed some of their profiles on social networks due to the spread of fake newsMarçal went to vote barefoot, five minutes before the polling station closed. “I came barefoot to show how much I was persecuted during this election campaign,” he said..
Even if Pablo Marçal remained at the gates of the second round, which will oppose Ricardo Nunes (candidate of Jair Bolsonaro) and Guilherme Boulos (candidate of Lula da Silva), his surprising result (a little more than 28%, of which 100% already scrutinized) ), suggests a promising path forward. Faced with the story of a self-taught businessman and the irreverent aggressiveness of Marçal, the agreements of the Bolsonaro family with the parties of the establishment They were interpreted by the most radical voters as old politics. Jair Bolsonaro’s support for Ricardo Nunes, candidate for re-election of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB), to the detriment of his own candidacy of the Liberal Party (PL), ended up backfiring. The pragmatic alliance of Bolsonarism In many capitals with traditional parties, essential for the former president to fight in Congress for his amnesty before the courts, he has lost the anti-system aspect of his candidacies.
As if that were not enough, the image of Jair Bolsonaro, politically disqualified and persecuted by multiple legal proceedings, is deteriorating. In São Paulo, a city where 63% of voters rejected any candidacy supported by Jair Bolsonaro, Ricardo Nunes’ official campaign hid the figure of the former president. Tarcísio de Freitas, governor Bolsonarist from the State of São Paulo, had to come to the aid of Nunes with his image of moderation.
Marçal’s rise in the polls brought heavyweights from Bolsonarism They will change jackets and declare their support, like Ricardo Salles (former Minister of the Environment) and the popular deputy Níkolas Ferreira (close friend of the Bolsonaro family). The former president’s own publicist, Sérgio Lima, was full of praise for Pablo Marçal. He attributed the candidate’s rise to his good relationship with social media algorithms that present controversial issues to the general public. “Social networks are governed by the same principle as elections: the masses elect power. “It’s the algorithm that rules,” Lima said.
Marçal’s first major breakout occurred during the floods in southern Brazil in May, when Marçal spread fake news and he fell out with the main television channel, Rede Globo, which catapulted his profile. His big outburst came early in the campaign, when he accused leftist Guilherme Boulos of using cocaine without evidence. And his latest outburst muddled the last electoral debate last Friday when he presented a false medical report once again associating Boulos with drug use.
Pablo Marçal’s latest provocation, which put him in the crosshairs of the justice system, has a clear objective according to a wing of his own party: to serve as a springboard for his candidacy for the 2026 presidential election.
The strength of center
If the emergence of a new extreme right complicated the campaign of certain candidates Bolsonaristas In capitals like São Paulo or Fortaleza, the main reason for the bittersweet result of the former president’s party is another: the strength of the party center, political field that goes from center to right. Parties such as MDB, Social Democratic Party (PSD), União Brasil, Partido Progessista (PP) and Podemos swept yesterday. They conquered capitals like Salvador de Bahía, Teresina and Florianópolis in the first round. And they will contest the second round in the vast majority of the 27 capitals. Lula’s PT and Bolsonaro’s PL are parties subordinate to said political bloc in most major cities.
The result from Rio de Janeiro, the country’s second electoral college and political cradle of Jair Bolsonaro, summarizes a picture that is repeated throughout the country. The current mayor Eduardo Paes, the PSD, despite being a historical ally of Lula, launched a free campaign, with nods to the left and right. Not only did he not agree to nominate a PT candidate for vice-mayor, but he asked Lula himself not to get involved in the campaign. The strategy worked: Paes won in the first round with 60.47% of the valid votes. The massive defeat of Alexandre Ramagem of the PL is particularly painful for Bolsonaro, who sees how the city where he grew up politically is turning its back on him. The PSD of the Paes will also be present in the second round of Belo Horizonte, one of the most important cities in the country, where it will face the candidate Bolsonarist Bruno Engler (PL).
On the other hand, the center was favored by the absence of a direct duel between Lula and Bolsonaro. Neither political leader got involved in the campaign as planned. Lula prioritized his international agenda in the face of local elections in which the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) did not have many advantages. Alerted by the bad omens of the polls for the left, the president preferred to pragmatically support the candidates of other acronyms in most capitals, in many cases, since the center. In São Paulo, one of the few places where Lula was present during the campaign, the alliance was with Guilherme Boulos (PSOL). In Rio de Janeiro, with Eduardo Paes. In Recife, Lula deflated the PT’s candidacy and ceded the hegemony of the left to João Campos, of the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB).
Everything indicates that Lula will go to the second round in São Paulo, the city where the PT was the party having obtained the most votes in the 2022 presidential elections.
The good moves
Despite Bolsonaro’s resounding failure in Rio de Janeiro, the PL achieved a good electoral result, although worse than expected. He conquered two capitals in the first round and will contest the second out of ten. Fortaleza (in the left-wing northeast) and Cuiabá (in the conservative agricultural center-west) will experience the only two direct confrontations between Lula’s PT and Bolsonaro’s PL. The good result of the far right is complemented by the victory of the Republicans in Vitoria, one of the capitals of the southeast.
Lula’s PT, which has not governed any capital since 2016, is catching some breath. Although he did not conquer any capital in the first round, he won in Contagem (Minas Gerais), a city of more than 600,000 inhabitants. And the second round will take place in four capitals. In addition to Fortaleza and Cuiabá, Lula’s party reaches the second round in Natal and Porto Alegre. This last city, where the World Social Forum and participatory budgets were born, which the left lost in 2017, is particularly symbolic. After the devastating floods of last May, the municipal management of the MDB, with the vice-mayor Bolsonaristhas been strongly questioned. Maria do Rosário, Minister of Human Rights between 2011 and 2014, to whom Jair Bolsonaro said “I am not raping you because you do not deserve it”, will be the candidate petist to try to reconquer what was one of the great bastions of the Brazilian left.
In Belo Horizonte and Belém, everything indicates that Lula will be in the second round alongside his political allies, who will fight Bolsonaro’s PL face to face.
