Since 2006, Brazil has seen a gradual outflow of voters from polling stations. This is even taking into account the fact that the country has rules specified by experts as the most favorable for the participation of the population during voting, such as single and simple registration and compulsory electronic voting. Researchers estimate that a stronger political scenario and the importance of economic issues, however, could make a difference in 2022 and mobilize broader voter participation.

If the presence of the current president and former president in the race for Planalto is confirmed, there will be a high degree of competition, an aspect that usually attracts voters to participate in the polls. The base of supporters of Jair Bolsonaro (no party) and Luis Inacio Lula da Silva (PT) exacerbate strong opposition to both, which tends to exacerbate the controversy and increase the number of voters willing to exercise their rights. votes.

“The tougher the elections, the greater the interest in participating,” says Professor Emerson Worms of the Political Science Department of the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR), abstinence specialist and author of the study Who Abstains in Brazil? “.

In addition, the likelihood that President Bolsonaro will start the race in second place, polls have shown, could increase public interest. “The fact that the challenger, Lula, is in the first place, attracts more voters, both government officials and members of the opposition. But we say a year earlier, a lot can change, “the professor assesses.

Parallel to Biden’s victory over Trump

Mauricio Moura, CEO of IDEIA Big Data and researcher at George Washington University in the United States, also sees the prospect of reversing the rise in abstainers on the horizon, with the Brazilian political scenario reflecting what was seen in the United States in 2020: more violence between the two parties and a tense and aggressive campaign.

In the United States, mobilizations were held last year to increase the participation of black voters, which is historically low for the country. In the state of Georgia, for example, Democrat Stacey Abrams created an organization that could register more than 800,000 voters, mostly blacks and young, which contributed to Joe Biden’s victory over Republican Donald Trump.

“Of course, the presidential elections [do Brasil em 2022] it will be very polarized and could interfere with other elections, ”says Moura, referring to elections to the House of Deputies, Senate, state executive and legislative bodies.

Photo: CNN Brasil

The economy must overcome anti-systemic discourse

Moura recalls that the 2018 elections were already polarized, but the criminalization of politics set the tone. The result is the lowest voter turnout in Brazil since 1998. “We saw an angry voter, and some of that anger was directed at not going to vote. It was a rejection of the political system at the top, ”he says.

But anti-systemic talk is likely to fade away. Moura emphasizes that all over the world those who tried to repeat the anti-political strategy had difficulties in the last elections. These are the cases of the Spanish parties Podemos e Cidadãos, the Italian Five Stars, French In March, as well as Donald Trump in the United States.

This discourse should give place to the economic theme. Today, the topics that most appeal to people on social media when it comes to politics are bailouts, tax reform, unemployment and inflation, which are generally more unfavorable to Bolsonaro in general. Therefore, according to the expert, the president should resort to such recommendations as criticism of the electoral system, or rather electronic voting. In his opinion, they represent an attempt to demobilize voters.

Whose fault is it?

Manicurist Erica Eugenio visited the polls in 2018 with a sense of disappointment. Therefore, he decided to cancel some of his votes. In the 2020 municipal elections, she did not go to vote. After a series of scandals that led to the fall of the mayors of her city, Erica lost her motivation.

Erica lives in Mococa, a municipality in the northeast of São Paulo. At 33.52%, the city ranked sixth most abstained in the country in the last elections. Fear of a pandemic, which filled 100% of the city’s intensive care beds, along with anxious local politics, are cited as some of the reasons for low adherence.

Since 2016, Mokoka has had two mayoral elections and four mayors. Confusion over mandate changes, allegations of corruption and the abandonment of the city, according to Erica, were the reasons that kept her from participating in the polls. “We are going to exercise our right as citizens, being sure that at least one of them will come and do something, but, unfortunately, they only promise. Then the people revolt, ”says the manicure master.

Eduardo Barison (SDP) was elected mayor of Mococa in 2020 with 12,406 votes, which is almost half of the total divestiture, the so-called white vote, zero and abstention, of 23,621. According to Erica, the leaking ballot box also can be seen as a way for voters to wash their hands about complaints of mismanagement and incidents of corruption. “Then the blame ultimately falls on the population because they voted.” she explains.

bureaucratic and social reasons

The country’s growing abstinence from voting, which reached 20.3% in the last national elections in 2018 and 29.5% in the 2020 municipal elections, may be due to the exhaustion of the cycle started in 1989 with the first elections since the dictatorship. as estimated by Emerson Worms.

The UFPR professor helped design a study to understand the reason for the exclusion of voters from polling stations in the last two elections. The factor that contributes the most to abstinence is strictly bureaucratic, according to the study, and concerns the change of residence or death of voters, information that takes time to register with the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) system and ultimately leads to an artificial increase in statistics. …

Photo: CNN

The second reason that contributed the most to the absence from the elections was the low level of education. In 2018, 24.3% of those who did not vote had only primary education, while abstinence accounted for almost half of those with higher education. Men also did not participate in elections more often than women.

Another study finding was related to the whereabouts of the abstentions. “Contrary to common sense, a greater proportional absence is observed in large municipalities, especially in those that belong to the metropolitan areas in the southeast,” says Cervi. “Abstinence is lower in smaller municipalities, mainly in the northeast. One explanation is that in these municipalities, politics is closer, voters are more dependent on politics and have an incentive to participate, ”he adds.

Another aspect that tends to increase abstinence is the ease with which to justify not voting after TSE created an excuse with a mobile app last year, which allows the process to be completed in a matter of seconds. In addition, maintaining fines at a purely symbolic cost, which in 2020 ranged from R $ 1.05 to R $ 3.51 per shift, also contributes to voter flight.

According to Worms, abstaining from voting is also related to voters’ perceptions of the natural dysfunctionality of politics, with its almost natural association with corruption and inefficiency. According to the professor, public opinion becomes alienated and runs away from political processes. “This alienates the voter, including the young voter, the one who starts their participation, and affects the level of abstinence,” he says.

In 2020, even though older people are more vulnerable to Covid-19 and therefore more afraid to leave their homes, the rise in abstinence has been largely driven by young people. Voter fleeing between the ages of 18 and 29 was 23.5%, almost nine percentage points higher than the abstinence rate in the 2016 municipal elections.

Representativeness crisis

Almost as many abstained in the municipal elections in Brazil last year as in the US presidential elections, where voting is optional. Americans registered 33.3% abstentions in the dispute between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, well below the numbers confirmed in the previous US election and just four percentage points higher than Brazil’s in the 2020 elections.

Omero Costa, a political science graduate student at the Federal University of Rio Grande Norte (UFRN) and a dissertation author on electoral exclusion, points to a crisis in world representation, which may be expressed in the naturalization of abstainers in countries. where voting is optional at about 50%.

In France, in the last regional elections held on June 20, the number of abstainers reached 68%, the highest rate since 1958, when the Fifth French Republic was founded and the current constitution was adopted. Voter turnout is down 16 percentage points from the previous regional elections six years ago.

French Minister of the Interior Gerald Darmanin expressed the day after this year’s vote and said the abstinence rate is a message from the population. “The French tell politicians they don’t trust them.” He decided not to say what to expect from 2022, when France will also host the presidential elections.

How to bypass demobilization

In the last two elections, demobilization of voters in Brazil has also been associated with a reduction in election time, which has been reduced from 60 to 45 days. “Under the pretext of providing cheaper elections, the number of political debates has decreased,” says Fernando Vieira, director of CAMP (Association of Political Marketing Professionals).

For him, the “ongoing campaign” emerged as a political marketing solution designed to overcome the barrier of low coverage in traditional media and the distance between representatives and the electorate. The style known in the United States as “non-stop campaigning” was successfully used by Bolsonaro to lead the polls in the 2018 election. “The Bolsonaro movement was of this type, establishing points of contact with the electorate practically from the day after the 2014 elections. It launched a ‘permanent’ social media campaign, ”Vieira emphasizes.

Quando assumiu o Governo, Bolsonaro permaneceu em campanha, com lives semanais e atuação constante no Twitter, enquanto Lula também tem movimentado com frequência suas redes sociais depois da anulação dos processos contra si.

According to Daisy Chokkari, a communications and policy researcher with a doctorate from Faculdade Cásper Líbero, the confinement during the pandemic increased public contact with political issues, mainly through social media, which could also contribute to more active participation in the polls in 2022. ” It’s not that we follow politics more, it’s just that politics becomes much easier for us, ”he notes.

According to the researcher, the increase in voter turnout in 2022 should be punctual, with a return to post-election apathy. “Politics is still viewed as something uninteresting, associated with corruption and lies. And that person who takes two hours by bus and two hours to get back from work just wants to go home and take care of his life. “

According to UFPR’s Emerson Worms, the ultimate reversal of people’s apathy necessarily involves the daily politicization of the population. “The absence of a negative campaign against institutional politics, the creation of public opinion against it is a good start. Then it should be understood that participation in elections is the result of a process that needs to be stimulated over four years, ”says the professor.