- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
Progressive voters and supporters of incumbent president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva left reeling after far-right surge
Flávio Bolsonaro is in pole position to win Brazil’s presidential election, after a far-right tsunami propelled him to a shock first-round victory over the incumbent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, leaving progressive voters reeling.
The 45-year-old rightwing candidate received 56.1m votes to Lula’s 53.8m – 47.03% to 45.16% – meaning the 80-year-old leftwinger has a mountain to climb if he is to bounce back in the second round on 25 October. Never, since the return of democracy to Brazil in 1985, has the first-round runner-up managed to turn the game around and win the second ballot.
“Miracles are possible in politics. But I don’t see that happening,” the political scientist Miguel Lago said of Lula’s chances of snapping back. “I don’t see Flávio losing this election now.”
Starting to feel more and more like humanity doesn’t deserve a happy ending.
oh it certainly does not
It just reminds us that a good % of humans are still animals.
hey now, don’t insult the animals, they have more standards than this.
Starting?
A lot of voters didn’t bother voting in the first round, because they knew that it would come down to a second. Brazil has like 20 or so parties, and one has to get over 50% of the votes to win. Just gotta wait for the second round, no point in getting worked up about this one, everyone knew it was going to come down to these two.
At the same time, the vast majority of the 8% who voted for someone other than these two in the first round voted for candidates more right-wing than Bolsonaro. Is there really no good way to remedy a January 6?
This is opposite to what I’m seeing.
Here’s the important chart:

From this, the 1.87% difference can be overcome by any of the 3rd-4th-5th place parties. Since I’m unfamiliar with Brazilian politics, Wikipedia says Avante is center-left-leaning (voted for Lula previously), Missao is hard-right-wing, and SDP is confusing but appears to now be center-left-wing. So if we are now pushing their voters to polarized ends, the right- and left-wing runners-up cancel each other out, and the remaining party’s votes could swing the election.
The problem will be if the weaker-left two parties divide their votes between Lula and Flavio, and the hard-right Missao goes to Flavio 100-ish%, then Flavio still wins. Or some other problem a real Brazilian will point out since I’m just piecing this together from Wikipedia.
I’ve analyzed all of the candidates appearing in first-round results: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/28475259 My takeaway is 4.71% right-wing against just 0.16% Lula-ish. If you search, you’ll also see most news outlets making the same predictions I am.
Yup, your analysis is better, because you look at the specific candidate and I just looked at the party.
You’re wrong. Curry is a self help author and clearly solidly on the right, Caiado is a carreer politician and on the right, only difference is that he’s an oportunist
There is no candidate more to the right of Bolsonaro. He is the frothing-in-the-mouth, extreme-far-right candidate.
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/28475259
Politics is crazier than one’d think.
Yeah, I know it well, since I was born in Brazil and lived here my entire life. Things never looked so bleak, not even when the (current jailed) Bolsofather won his presidency 8 years ago
The majority of those 8% intend to vote for Lula on the second round, where both Flavio and Lula are tied on the polls and neither is “poised to win”.
Also, international press is incompetent.
Also also, WTF does “more right-wing” than alt-right means?
The majority of those 8% intend to vote for Lula on the second round
Source?
both Flavio and Lula are tied on the polls
the round-one polls had Lula leading Flávio by 3 points. the result was instead Flávio leading Lula by 2 points. That’s a big miss.
WTF does “more right-wing” than alt-right
I’m not good at Brazillian politics either, but I’m going to research the entire makeup of the 8%:

- Cury’s (2.86%) is the only one I’m not sure of. On one hand his party’s ideology is moderate “Labourism”, on the other hand:
Thaise Lima, a 41-year-old lawyer on her way to vote in Sao Paulo, said her main goal was to get Lula’s Workers’ Party out of office. “I don’t think Flavio is the best candidate, but I might decide to vote for him in the next few minutes,” she said, adding that she wished psychiatrist and author Augusto Cury were a more viable candidate.
- Renan Santos (2.24%), Missão: National liberalism, technocapitalism, bukelism, “The Feindstrafrecht says that certain people, as enemies of the society (or the state), do not deserve the protections of the civil or penal law.” At least they support sustainability and infrastructure. Santos alleged a “wave” of neurotypical individuals falsely claiming to be autistic to obtain benefits and neurotypivestigated an actress.
- Ronaldo Caiado (2.18%): For some reason “Social Democra-” means economic neoliberalism in Brazil apparently. Party ideology mostly known for pragmatism: “We are neither a right-wing party nor a left-wing nor a centrist party.” (?) Caiado is a right-winger known for criticizing Lula and leading opposition to land reform, seems to have similar campaign on crime as Flávio Bolsonaro.
- Romeu Zema (0.27%) in 2023 implied South and Southwest Brazil separatism to the great horror of everyone and Bolsonaro. In 2020, he said “We need to have tools that curb what we might call a natural instinct of human beings” to promote a support program for domestic violence survivors. In May argued for child labor (under 16).
- Samara Martins (0.10%) is left socialist.
- Hertz Dias (0.04%), Fourth International.
- Clariano Barão (0.03%), Christian Democracy party, paternalistic conservatism. Like the German CDU so I’ll concede this isn’t more right-wing.
- Edmilson Costa (0.02%), communist.
- Wilson Grassi (0.01%), single issue anti-abortion “Woman’s Party” known for failing to meet state quota of women candidates in 2017.
- Rui Costa Pimenta (0.01%), of dissident Trotskyists party that praised Taliban and al-Qaeda for triumph “over American imperialism”, opposes “gender ideology”.
Excluding Cury and Barão, I count 4.71% right-wing against just 0.16% Lula-ish, or against 0.19% if we include Barão in the latter count, or against 3.05% even if we include Cury in the latter (which I quite doubt we can). If we add these numbers to the first-round results of Flávlo vs. Lula, Flávlo’d have a 6-point, 6-point, or 4-point lead.
Source?
Any recent poll. You can search them here:
https://www.planopolitico.com.br/agregador/presidente/
Also, every single polling institute said the prediction for Flavio was underestimated. On basically every poll.
every single polling institute said the prediction for Flavio was underestimated
I can’t find that in the polls you linked. They seem to accord with what I said: They showed a 3-point Lula lead until 28 September, and the final averages have a 1.6-point Lula lead, while Flávio Bolsonaro in fact won by 2 points.
I think it’s reasonable to assume the round 2 polls also underestimate Flávio to a similar degree, as American (the continents’) polls have done with alt-right candidates time and time again. I do not trust you saying this means the 8% will majorly vote for Lula when the evidence above points otherwise, and the media doesn’t either.
That french invention, that gravity assisted rail-mount blade system, is quite effective even as a deterrent
So you execute Jair, and Flávio does this, plus some other Bolsonarist executes Lula.
I was replying to the last question, i.e. “is there no way to remedy a Jan 6?”.
Traitors who want to upend democracy deserve no less.
Supporters of the traitors then should either shut the fuck up or risk losing their heads as well.
I am aware of what you were saying. I responded to it.
And if you wanna know more about Flávio Bolsonaro, with whom he’s hanging out, watch this, it’s dubbed, but it’s worth watching.
Presidentialism is a dead-end strand of democracy. Progressives living in such systems everywhere should be pushing to reform it to parliamentarianism. No one election should have such cosmic level effects.
Absolutely not the case. Maybe where you are and in the so-called first world. Parlamentarianism would be a huge boon for the right in Brasil. Hell, things have progressively sucked since the 2016 coup cause the parliment has increased its powers a fuck ton
My perspective is the European periphery (Greece) and Canada. I don’t know in particular what the Brazilian parliament is doing. I suspect (feel free to correct me) that within a presidential system, where parliament can be weaponized against a personalist presidency, sure it can become a vehicle for irresponsible brinksmanship, just like in the US. But the moment a parliament becomes itself responsible for governing, when things cannot be blamed on some singular President, when governments can lose the confidence of the parliament and elections can be triggered things change and parliaments have to start taking shit seriously.
That said, Parliamentarianism is not the perfect democratic system, it’s just better than Presidentialism. It is also not a guarantee against fascism (cf Hungary, Italy), it is just harder to subvert them. It is no coincidence that democracies that slide to authoritarianism tend to reform themselves into presidential systems, like Turkey. And of course, the real question is what is even better than both, how do we perfect democracy beyond 19th century political technologies, but that’s a different discussion.
Vote.
Voting is mandatory in Brazil
What’s the penalty if you don’t?
Hopefully the people of Brazil can stand up and fight back against this sad situation. You are not alone in this BS we can and will overcome this.
Probably won’t. Right wing dumbfuckery is a world wide trend.

That’s what Lula’s voters think about this guy
They should have hanged his dad.
Dear Brazil, why didn’t you learn from the USA’s mistakes?
Its insane because brazillians are so online and i know so many nice brazillians who im sure voted lula even if hes still corrupt and not a good candidate but much better than Bolsonaro. Its just insane to see this literal clown get elected.
Knows the machines








