Explaining Brazil #314: A Brazilian MAGA?

Author

Gustavo Ribeiro
October 30, 2024 • Reading Time: 4 minutes

A number of takes and analyses of this past weekend’s municipal election runoffs in Brazil spoke to the advances of the country’s so-called “Big Center,” the large group of conservative rent-seeking parties present in force in Congress. Others looked at President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s Workers’ Party, which managed to win in only one of the country’s state capital.

But what has gone somewhat under the radar in the post-vote unpacking has been the consolidation of the Liberal Party, the political outfit of far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro.

While perhaps some of Mr. Bolsonaro’s high-profile radical right names were unable to get over the line, the party did astonishingly well nationwide, obtaining the most votes in municipalities with more than 500,000 residents, and winning the most mayorships among cities with 200,000 voters or more.

And with success, comes influence. And this week, we’ll explore how Mr. Bolsonaro is seeking to wield that influence.

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This episode used music from Uppbeat and Envato. License codes: Fairytales by Daniel Zambo, Aspire by Pryces (B6TUQLVYOWVKY02S), and Private Investigation by AMZA (V9ZG3LD).

In this episode:

  • Cláudio Couto is a political scientist and professor at think-tank Fundação Getúlio Vargas. He is also the host of the Fora da Política não há salvação podcast.

Background reading:

  • On the morning after the runoff election, our Brazil Weekly newsletter highlighted that while Jair Bolsonaro maintained his strength, the broader right outperformed him.

  • We showed how the Workers’ Party’s nominal 2024 gains masked deeper struggles to connect with voters in Brazil’s biggest left-wing party.

  • The municipal runoff elections recorded a 29.26 percent abstention rate, the second highest in the country’s history — behind only the 29.5 percent recorded in 2020, in the middle of the Covid pandemic.

  • When talking about the “Big Center,” Gilberto Kassab is Brazil’s ultimate éminence grise, heading a party that has consistently grown its congressional and municipal footprint

  • In the aftermath of the first-round vote, we identified how Brazil’s right was in flux, with establishment politicians and wildcard newcomers measuring forces for control over Brazil’s conservative movement.

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