Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s incumbent president, topped polling averages by up to 8% in the first round of presidential elections on Sunday, setting up a runoff on Oct. 30 with former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
“All of their predictions were wrong, and they are already the biggest losers in this election. We beat that lie, and now we will win the election,” Bolsonaro, who has spent months discrediting the integrity of elections in Brazil, said Monday.
Polls leading up to last weekend’s vote had consistently shown a strong advantage for Lula, and Bolsonaro, like one of his main foreign backers, former President Donald Trump, had regularly criticized those polls, while seeming to lay the groundwork to contest his eventual defeat.
“The people want our government to continue. These polls are worthless,” he told reporters in mid-September.
Overall poll averages suggested he would only get around 35% of the vote and that Lula might even win in the first round by getting over 50%. Instead, Bolsonaro received 43.2% and Lula got 48.4%.
The poll skepticism is part of a broader effort by Bolsonaro to challenge Brazil’s electoral system. His comments even hinted at a violent confrontation and coincided with an increase in political violence in Brazil. In late August, he claimed he would not leave office unless arrested or killed, adding: “And let me tell the scum: I will never be arrested.”
Like Trump ahead of the 2020 U.S. election, Bolsonaro began casting doubt on electoral processes in Brazil long before Election Day, saying he would only support the outcome if he felt the election was “clean and transparent”.
In July, Bolsonaro convened a meeting with foreign diplomats in Brazil to document his concerns about voter fraud, although, like Trump, he offered no credible evidence of widespread election irregularities. In a presentation to diplomats, he chose to focus on a 2018 incident in which a single hacker hacked into the country’s electronic voting system but failed to gain access to voting machines or code. critical source. Police ruled that the violation had no effect on the outcome of the election.
In both countries, the lack of evidence has not prevented the spread of allegations of electoral fraud and, as in the United States, a large percentage of the Brazilian population doubts the integrity of the elections. A January 2022 Axios-Momentive poll found that more than 40% of Americans do not believe President Biden was legitimately elected. Similarly, just before Sunday’s race, a Gallup poll found that two-thirds of Brazilians said they didn’t think Brazil’s election would be fair.
Brazil’s electronic voting system, which has been in place since 1996, has robust security protocols and is subject to random testing to ensure election standards are met. After Bolsonaro’s criticism in 2018, Brazil’s national electoral authority invited a record number of foreign observers to oversee this year’s vote, including from The Carter Center and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems.
The policies of Bolsonaro and Lula are in stark contrast to each other. Bolsonaro has built a reputation as a nationalist espousing many conservative positions, including opposition to same-sex marriage, LGBTQ rights, abortion and environmental regulations, as well as support for gun ownership and In the Army. Lula leads a campaign that appeals strongly to the working class, with promises to raise the minimum wage, expand the social safety net and, above all, to fight deforestation in the Amazon. The two candidates promised to increase cash transfers to the country’s poorest populations.
Future problems?
On Monday, the White House said the election in Brazil was conducted in a “free, fair, transparent and credible manner”. According to the Brazilian report, the Brazilian Ministry of Justice reported “87 cases of vote buying or electoral corruption…71 violations of the secrecy of the vote, 379 cases of illegal campaigning and 62 cases of illegal transport of voters” .
The big question is how far Bolsonaro and his supporters will go if he loses on October 30. For months, pundits have worried about the ramifications if he rejects the election results, fearing an event like the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the United States Capitol or something worse. Before the first round, Bolsonaro told his supporters: “If necessary, we will go to war.”
Bolsonaro’s close relationship with the military and law enforcement, potentially his key allies if he tries to run for office, is of particular concern. Sometimes more than half of his cabinet is made up of former military officials. He further sounded the alarm by pushing for the military to play a role in certifying election results, inviting comparisons to the military dictatorship in Brazil that ended in 1985.
Still, most analysts generally think a military intervention on Bolsonaro’s behalf is unlikely. Brazil’s Supreme Court has taken steps to curb military police political activity and signaled its intention to reject any attempt by Bolsonaro to overturn the results if they went against him. Likewise, the military has made efforts to distance itself from Bolsonaro.
Voting this weekend passed off without violence, but observers fear a close second round could spell trouble if the results don’t go its way. Bolsonaro’s actions by the time Brazilians return to the polls on October 30 will be closely watched.