Ciro needs to broaden his voter profile to become a competitive candidate

PT and PDT are the two main left-wing parties in Brazil. However, they have completely different trajectories. A tiny difference of votes, exactly 0.65%, determined the victory Luis Inacio Lula da Silva about Leonel Brizola in the first round of the 1989 election, the first direct presidential election since the redemocratization, with Lula receiving 16.69% and Brizola 16.04% of the vote.

This tiny discrepancy in the number of votes seems to have determined not only who will run in the second round of the presidential election against Fernando Collor that year, but fundamentally determined the future trajectories of the party, which both PT and PDT began to follow.

As in people’s lives, the result achieved at a historic crossroads has a decisive influence on the next steps that the parties will take and the impact they will have on the politics of a given country.

Even after losing to Collor in the second round, the PT became the protagonist’s party, consistently sticking to the majority trajectory, fielding competitive candidates for the presidency in all subsequent elections. In addition, the PT became the core to which all the other parties of the Brazilian left began to gravitate.

While the PDT ran candidates for the presidency on two more occasions, Brizola in 1994 and Ciro Gomez in 2018, electoral defeats along the way saw the PDT essentially become the supporting party in the Legislative Assembly, playing a partner role in most cases. . , PT in their coalitions in Congress.

This Wednesday, the 20th, the PDT is holding its National Convention. Ciro will try to change his personal destiny (he has already been a presidential candidate three times) and, most importantly, the never-achieved trajectory of his party, striving for a political protagonist. Will it be this time?

Ciro is trying to position himself as an alternative candidate, a kind of third path to a tense polarization between Lula and Bolsonaro. On average, 8% of voters who expressed their intention to vote for him represent a profile largely formed by civil servants, white, educated and high-income. In other words, they are mostly left-wing voters who are frustrated by the inefficient and deviant management of the PT.

To become more competitive, Ciro needs to broaden his voter profile. It is very difficult for Ciro to compete with the centre-right and right-wing electorate. Therefore, it is necessary to specifically target the voters revolving around Lula’s candidacy. That is why he cannot do without merciless criticism of Lula’s candidacy.