The first round of the Brazilian national election happened on October 4th. While the country witnesses a violent campaign for the presidential second round, we can already draw a few conclusions based on the first-round results. It is crucial to highlight that this election goes beyond the campaign for the presidency. Brazilians have already voted for their congressional representatives, senators, and state governors. Since Brazil is a multi-party federal system with 23 parties in parliament, it becomes complex to analyze its results. Still, three important conclusions emerge from the first-round results.
The first indication is that the liberal party (PL in the Brazilian acronym), which Bolsonaro is part of, got a surprisingly positive result. PL will be the party with more deputies: 99 in the Brazilian lower house. Also, it will be the biggest party in the Senate with 15 senators. In the previous election, PL had 77 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 9 in the Senate. Bolsonaro was not affiliated with this party at that time. This increase in the number of deputies reflects that the president in office effectively brought more deputies to his party. Furthermore, the party won in the first round of the election for the Rio de Janeiro governor, something unpredicted by the local polls. In the Brazilian south, PL’s candidates are leading the run for the second round in the states of Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina.
In São Paulo, the wealthier and more populated Brazilian state, TarcÃsio de Freitas, former minister of Bolsonaro, probably will win. His opponent is the candidate of the workers’ party, Fernando Haddad. TarcÃsio is part of Republicanos, a party that supports Bolsonaro. In the polls, Haddad appeared as the leader in the run for governor. However, the results showed the opposite. In the first round, TarcÃsio gained over 40% of the votes. Meanwhile, in Minas Gerais, the second-biggest Brazilian state in population, another candidate from the right won. There, Zema, from a small neoliberal party, won in the first round. His party (NOVO) is not a supporter of Bolsonaro. Still, as a rightist, he hardly will back a government of the workers’ party.
The second important indication of the first round is that the left parties in Brazil continue having considerable difficulty in increasing their votes. The workers’ party (PT in the Brazilian acronym), which Lula founded, rose its number of deputies and senators. However, other leftist parties did not achieve the same positive results. PC do B (-2), PSB (-9), PDT (-2) and SD (-4) lost deputies. Meanwhile, PSOL (+4), REDE (+2), and PV (+2) slightly improved their results. Still, REDE and PV are ecological parties that do not always consider themselves leftists. Considering the ten parties that supported Lula in the first term, they have won only one additional seat in the Chamber of Deputies.
Seeking to unify the left to defeat Bolsonaro, some of these parties turned their focus extensively to the national election. As a result, PT will have over twelve deputies than it had. PSB had the biggest fall. As a historical party for the Brazilian left, the party showed Lula’s vice-president: Geraldo Alckmin, a former governor of São Paulo. However, it could not turn Alckmin national importance into votes. Albeit the left did not achieve an impressive result in terms of deputies, it kept some crucial governors, especially in the Brazilian northeast.
The third conclusion is that the so-called centrão (central parties) will keep their importance in the coalition presidentialism. These parties back whoever is in power in Brazil. They supported both the leftist government of Lula and Dilma Rousseff and the rightist government of Temer and Bolsonaro. The support of parties like MDB or PSD will still be necessary for the next president. Without them, it becomes difficult to pass proposals to congress.
These three conclusions have some fundamental consequences on Brazilian domestic and foreign policy. The first is that national political instability will probably persist. It seems unlikely that Bolsonaro or Lula will conciliate with the supporters of the other. Both PL and PT strengthened their forces for the next mandate. Meanwhile, smaller parties closer to them seem to have lost some of their political agency. If Bolsonaro wins, PT will have more voices claiming against him. If Lula wins, PL will oppose him.
However, the parties at the political center will probably permit the next president to govern. Once whoever wins the presidential election will need the support of the centrão to pass their proposals in congress suggests extremist policies will tend to be blocked. This can be positive or not. Taxing enormous fortunes, for example, will not be swallowed by these parties.
It is also possible to find some indications about what might happen after the second round with the two candidates. Even though Bolsonaro eventually loses the presidential election, bolsonarismo (as Bolsonaro’s ideas are called) will hardly be dead. Similar to the US, where Trump’s shade remains, Bolsonaro will still have supporters in many, and important, stances of power. His recurrent discourse against the digital counting of votes also shows that he will tend to discredit potential negative results.
The opposite is more difficult to be concluded. If PT loses the presidential election, it seems natural that the party will face some discontentment among left-wing parties. It might represent a loss in its centrality on this side of the political spectrum. And this happens for a few factors. The first is that before the beginning of the election, Bolsonaro had too many weaknesses that a unifying candidate against him would easily win. The disastrous performance during the pandemic, the poor economic results, the return of famine, and the devastation of the Amazon are a few examples of this disaster.
Bolsonaro used some electoral policies to mitigate his problematic government. The program entitled auxÃlio Brasil gave 600 reais to poor families. Despite that, if Lula loses, it will signify that voters discredit his party. Most of Bolsonaro’s supporters recurrently claim that PT fostered corruption and led Brazil to bankruptcy. Even though the Supreme Court absolved Lula, ordinary citizens still seem to doubt his party’s integrity.
In terms of foreign policy, the first-round results and the polls show Lula will probably win. Here, Brazil will probably have a turn in its domestic and foreign policy. Lula signaled his disapproval of how the West managed the beginning of the Ukrainian war. Still, he is more active in environmental protection, which might bring Brazil closer to countries like France. Moreover, Mercosur and BRICS were two international organizations to that Lula gave primacy during his two terms. Since PT’s departure from office, both lost some importance in Brazilian foreign policy.
On October 30th, Brazilians will go again to vote. Independently of the results, the most important is that political polarization does not turn into political violence. The prospect of confrontations is frightening, but, unfortunately, possible. Parts of the population still maintain a discourse in defense of a hypothetical presidential coup. If this is the case, all the above conclusions fall apart. If this is the case, the only conclusion is that Brazil will no longer be a democracy.
