The unlikely president:

Abstract

In this paper we use surveyed data to understand Bolsonaro’s electorate and, in doing so, we discuss significant interpretations about the conditions to the rise of populist politicians. In the first section, we present and discuss macro interpretations that resort either to socioeconomic or political culture processes in order to explain populism. In the second part, we describe, briefly, Jair Bolsonaro’s political career and show why he is an authentic member of the populist family. In the third and fourth sections, we present survey data on Bolsonaro’s voters, their socioeconomic features, and their beliefs regarding political regimes and democratic institutions, and contending moral issues. We argue that data show that the president social bases are not those the current literature relates to populist leaders and that their attitudes towards politics and moral issues do not differ significantly from those found among supporters of other candidates running for the presidency in 2018. In the conclusions, we suggest some alternative explanations to Bolsonaro’s unexpected electoral success

Bolsonaro and the Black Vote: Racial Voting in Brazil’s 2018 Election

“…In the second round, roughly 56 percent of white and brown voters supported Bolsonaro, compared to 45 percent of black voters ( p < .001). This difference of roughly 10 points between black and nonblack voters replicates the direction and significance of estimates computed from other survey samples (Almeida and Guarnieri 2020; Layton et al 2021). 13 In both rounds of voting, differences emerge only between black and nonblack voters, on average.…”

“…Findings of Almeida and Guarnieri (2020) support the notion that the estimated effects of race in the 2018 election might be confounded by region. These authors report that nonwhite voters in the Southeast were significantly more likely to support Bolsonaro than those in the Northeast, though it is not clear whether they lump together brown and black voters.…”

“…In the following elections, this effect holds most consistently for black voters. In 2018, brown voters do not exhibit preferences significantly different from white voters on average, just as others have found (Almeida and Guarnieri 2020;Amaral 2020;Layton et al 2021). But most important, the electoral preferences of black voters in 2018 were not different from 2014, when black voters were roughly 10 points more likely to support PT candidates in both rounds of voting (p < .05).…”

“…In this article, I argue that neither perspective fully captures the racial dynamics of Brazil's 2018-and possibly earlier-elections. I show that racial identification emerged as a significant predictor of presidential support for the leftist Workers' Party (PT, Partido dos Trabalhadores) long before Bolsonaro's candidacy, and that the racialized behavior identified in previous analyses of the 2018 election (Almeida and Guarnieri 2020;Amaral 2020;Layton et al 2021) does not depart from this longer-term pattern in direction or degree. The relevant question, I argue, is not if race impacts voter preferences but for whom it does.…”

Extreme-right, democracy and oligarchy

“…This was just a natural successor to Lula's poor man's personal outlook and public demeanour. His share of the electorate in 2018 largely demonstrates this, with a powerful show in the periphery of the big cities, where the Evangelical churches are extremely strong, although he was initially less popular in the northeast and with blacks and women and in the southeast, with his supporters showing some less commitment to democracy (Tavares de Almeida & Guarnieri, 2020;Cardoso, 2020;Nicolau, 2020).…”