The polls give Bolsonaro enormous power in Congress and the States despite Lula's victory

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro leaves after marking his vote at a polling station in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on October 2, 2022. ANDRE COELHO (AP)

That half of Brazil that thought that the era of Jair Bolsonaro at the head of Brazil was a passing nightmare received a good slap this Sunday.

The first round of elections culminated in a remarkable show of force from the other half of the country, embodied by the far-right president.

This will be measured with the leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, 76, in the final duel on the 30th. The 67-year-old president, who aspires to achieve a second term, arrives in a much more vigorous position than expected. any poll had predicted.

The hard core of Bolsonarism has been strengthened, refined and displays a more homogeneous discourse, explains political scientist Camila Rocha.

"It cannot be ruled out that he will be re-elected," warns this researcher of the Bolsonarist phenomenon.

The president emerges from these elections with enormous power in Congress — his Liberal Party achieved the largest parliamentary group — and territorial power: nine of the gubernatorial candidates sponsored by Bolsonaro scored a victory, compared to five related to Lula.

Now, the president trusts that the monthly aid for the poor and the signs of economic improvement will give him the impetus to defeat Lula.

Confusing again and knowingly the president with the candidate, the Government announced this Monday that the Brazil Aid payment will be transferred before the scheduled date.

It will reach the 20 million poor people who receive it five days before they are summoned again to elect the next president.

"Now we have what is necessary to liberate Brazil from authoritarianism, blackmail and injustice," the president tweeted on Monday.

Meanwhile, the São Paulo Stock Exchange received the election results this Monday with a rise of 4.6% and a fall in the dollar.

- Keep ham or focus!

One of the main and most difficult objectives was achieved once.

We fear what is necessary to liberate Brazil from authoritarianism, blackmail and injustice that makes us so angry.

A deepest change in the country has come!

There is nothing to fear.

— Jair M. Bolsonaro 2️⃣2️⃣ (@jairbolsonaro) October 3, 2022

The Bolsonarist hard core is made up of people - with a significant majority of men - who are proud to be right-wing, patriotic, conservative.

Something that is evident in any of the massive concentrations that they summon.

A reflection of the strength that he has maintained despite the many turbulences of the mandate, a fact that has been repeatedly repeated: the president maintained the support of at least a third of the electorate even in the worst moments of the pandemic, with peaks of 4,000 deaths per day .

The polls have again underestimated, as in 2018, his performance in the electronic polls, in line with that half of Brazilians who refuse to believe that a president who is openly reactionary, misogynist, who knowingly delayed the purchase of vaccines, maintains the support of such a large portion of his compatriots in the fourth largest democracy in the world.

The groups that nurture Bolsonarism are white, those over 40 years old, those who earn twice the minimum wage (that is, about 390 dollars or euros), evangelicals, those linked to agribusiness, members of the security forces and who live in the richest Brazil, the southern half of the country, explains specialist Rocha.

The north is Lula territory.

Businessman Newton Publio is one of those proud Bolsonaristas.

The owner of a shooting club with 6,500 members in Salto de Pirapora, in the interior of the State of São Paulo, said on Monday that the number of candidates sponsored by Bolsonaro and elected shows that the movement he leads “has great strength.”

And in an exchange of messages he added an optimist looking forward: those deputies, senators and governors "are going to help (Bolsonaro) a lot in the management of his next term."

No one doubts that the four weeks remaining until the second Lula-Bolsonaro round will be extremely tense.

The victory that General Eduardo Pazuello, the third Brazilian Minister of Health during the pandemic, scored this Sunday, helps to understand the phenomenon.

This military man who Bolsonaro chose for the position after the two previous incumbents, doctors, refused to promote drugs that lacked scientific backing for covid, became the most voted federal deputy in Rio de Janeiro with more than 205,000 votes .

He was the minister of

the one who publicly confessed that his role there was to carry out the boss's orders without question.

It mattered little to those Carioca voters that during the administration of Pazuello, an expert in logistics in the Army, patients admitted to hospitals in Manaus (Amazonas) died due to lack of oxygen.

Starting next year he will have a seat in Congress.

Next to him, the former Environment Minister Ricardo Salles disembarks, the one who in the midst of a pandemic said in a council of ministers that since the press was focused on the coronavirus it was time to go "

" (of ox), in reference to make laws more flexible to favor ranchers who want to gain more land from the Amazon for pasture.

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