Brazil: Center Parties Find No Opponent for the Lula-Bolsonaro Duel

January 20, 2022

a third of the Brazilian electorate are undecided. photo: Bill Hackwell

So far, with time still left, no viable candidates have emerged as an alternative to avoid a confrontation between the former president and the current president in the October Brazilian presidential elections.

Former leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2010), who has not yet officially announced his candidacy, has 48% of the votes, according to the latest poll published in mid-December by the Datafolha Institute.

Ultra-right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro retains second place (22%), although his popularity rating is at its lowest point.

But what about the other candidates?

Not even adding up the voting intentions of the three best placed ones reaches the support of the head of state: former anti-corruption judge Sergio Moro (center right) has 9%; Ciro Gomes, center left and third in the 2018 presidential election, 7%, and the governor of Sao Paulo, Joao Doria (center right), 4%.

“At the moment we do not have a candidate with the profile to surpass Lula or Bolsonaro,” Paulo Baia, professor of political science and sociology at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), tells AFP.

Loyal electorate

“There is a part of society, clearly identified in the polls, that wants neither Lula nor Bolsonaro. They are waiting for the emergence of a candidate, the problem is that so far he has not appeared or was not clearly identified,” says Leandro Gabiati, political analyst and director of the consulting firm Dominium.

According to him, the centrists have an important disadvantage: “The key to the presidential election is the sympathy that a candidate manages to arouse”, and aspirants such as Sergio Moro do not have the same “charisma” as Lula or Bolsonaro.

Lula “brings good memories to voters” because of his two terms in office marked by an economic boom and ambitious social programs, Baia explains.

Bolsonaro manages to “stay competitive” despite a much less flourishing economic context, with galloping inflation and high unemployment, and criticism of his handling of the pandemic, which killed more than 620, 000 people in Brazil.

“He realized that by attacking institutions, vaccines, electronic ballot boxes, he manages to retain a hard core of voters who can assure him 15 to 20% of the votes”, says the UFRJ professor.

One third of undecided of the electorate undecided

Newbie in politics Sergio Moro, 49-year-old former magistrate is a sworn enemy of Lula, whom he sentenced to prison for corruption in 2017. The former president spent 18 months behind bars before

being freed by a decision of the Supreme Court, which overturned his convictions, allowing him to run again.

The court decision was a blow to Moro, whom the high court considered “biased” in the former president’s case. And the former judge is also far from playing in Bolsonaro’s camp. As Minister of Justice in his government, he resigned in April 2020 and since then has been considered a traitor by sectors close to the president.

Joao Doria, meanwhile, was Bolsonaro’s ally during the 2018 presidential campaign, before becoming one of his fiercest opponents. This seasoned business leader, who hosted the Brazilian version of The Apprentice, a reality show hosted by Donald Trump, confronted the head of state several times at the height of the pandemic, opposing his anti-confinement policy and anti-vaccine rhetoric. But he struggles to get above 5% in the polls.

A fiery candidate who dreams of refocusing the left, Ciro Gomes seems unlikely to take votes away from Lula to emulate the good score of the last elections, in which he came third, with 12.5% of the votes.

With the three of them far from competing in the polls, the hypothesis of an alliance around a single center candidate has come up, in order to make it to the runoff.

But Gabiati considers this scenario improbable, because he does not see any of them “putting aside their ambitions”; although he warns that there is still a chance that one of them will emerge when the electoral campaign begins in August.

“For many Brazilians, the election is still far away, there are still many undecided”, he points out, in reference to the fact that, according to surveys, at least a third of the electorate still does not know who they will vote for.

Source: Resumen Latinoamericano