Brazil’s presidential election reached its final week with an analysis of the fallout from the arrest of former MP Roberto Jefferson (PTB) following resistance and attacks on federal police with firearms and grenades. However, a polarization scenario marked even before the election period points to a consolidated election and few opportunities for events to effectively influence polling results, according to political scientist Alberto Carlos Almeida.
For Almeida, author of Mão ea Luva: What Elects the President, the last stretch of the election is a fertile scenario for what he describes as a “magic thought” sparked by an analysis that seeks to link campaign-affecting events to a possible shift in popular voting.
“Micro-events happen, and everyone wants to analyze them, people believe in illusion, in magic. In fact, every time someone says that something is happening and there will be a change in voting, there is an explanation of electoral behavior in that person’s head, this explanation, in my opinion, is a magical explanation, and not a serious scientific discussion. . For example, the Roberto Jefferson event: everyone is very confused. They say this will affect the vote, but no one even knows exactly in which direction. It will happen that it will not affect anything or will affect very little, ”he estimates.
In an interview with Estado de Minas, Almeida says there is a claim to value that a voter has fickle allegiances to the point of being affected by every electoral move or event that is considered positive or negative for a candidate. The political scientist claims that the elections were little influenced by the events of the entire campaign and that in the specific case of this election, the figures of Jair Bolsonaro (PL) and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (PT) further crystallize this scenario.
“In principle, this is a very long process. We have been campaigning since last year. An implicit campaign that began in March, when Federal Supreme Court (STF) Minister Edson Fachin nullified Lula’s lawsuits and returned him to court. Lula is well known as the most popular leader of all time on the Brazilian left, and Bolsonaro on the right. The choice is already set very quickly, and now, this last week, we will see discussions that contradict a very obvious fact: we have been in the context of a very set election for more than 12 months,” he notes.
According to the political scientist, there is a certain degree of contempt for the political consciousness of voters in “magical thinking” and in hyperanalysis, which is aggravated as we approach the end of the electoral period. For Almeida, to think that events close to election day could change the outcome of the vote is to think that the population can be easily fooled. “Solid preferences are being built, they may not be guided by the same values or set by the same criteria, but they are solid.”
Focus on the abstentions
More than 20% of Brazilian voters did not vote in the first round in 2022. The historical picture shows that this number usually increases in the second round, when the dispute is concentrated on leadership positions. However, in a polarized scenario where two names garnered over 90% of the valid votes, convincing the doubters and increasing their presence at the polls became a central strategy for Lula and Bolsonaro.
In recent speeches, two candidates in the Palacio do Planalto urged their supporters to focus on those who did not vote in the first round or who annulled the vote. Bolsonaro, for example, is working to fuel Lula’s opposition to try to convince those who didn’t go to the polls in the first round. PT is also trying to win zero and white votes from opposition to the incumbent, betting on voter transfers from Ciro Gomez (PDT) and Simone Tebet (MDB) and has repeatedly praised free public transport measures on Election Day. .
For Alberto Carlos Almeida, if there is movement in the campaigns to focus on the waverers and attack the abstentions, this indicates that the candidates themselves have already understood the scenario of consolidation between those who chose them in the first round and should repeat their vote per second.
“This is a real admission that you cannot vote. It is very difficult. And there is an additional situation, the available votes, which were Simone and Ciro, were already determined in the first week of the second round. These voters are also consolidated,” he adds.
Almeida is betting on an annulment rate lower than that reported in voter polls based on historical statistics. “Only in the 2018 elections, there was an increase in white and zero votes, but it was a time when there was a big wave of people who were not going to vote for either Fernando Haddad (PT) or Bolsonaro.” In the second round of the last presidential election, 9.59% of voters decided not to choose any of the candidates.
For a political scientist, however, the strategy of reducing abstentions may not work. “I am very skeptical about reducing abstinence. It has a migratory component, so there is a gender of abstentions, people who move and do not transfer the title. There is also a component of disinterest in voting. There are people who have not voted for many years.”
second round long
“Constitutionally, elections are held with the first round on the first Sunday in October and the second round on the last. This year there was a break of four weeks between the votings, this is a very long period, and the result may show that the second round campaigns are ineffective in converting votes,” says Almeida.
Since the redemocratization, this is the seventh presidential election, the decision of which will be made in the second round. So far there has never been a tipping point and the trend is towards stability. In the three times he advanced to the second round, Lula scored at least 12 points over the original vote. In 2018, Bolsonaro won from 46% to 55% of the valid votes between the ballots.
In 1989, Lula lost the election to Fernando Collor de Mello, but received the largest runoff margin for the losing candidate, up 29.8 percentage points. Almeida points out that the election, however, was different: the votes in the first round were split among several candidates, as opposed to 2022, when “third way” names could not even garner 10% of the valid votes when added.
