Brazilian parliamentary elections: expert assessment and event

published on 4 October 2022 | reading time approx. 1 minute

Our Brazil expert and Managing Partner South America Philipp Klose-Morero gives his assessment of the elections in Brazil:

We had anticipated right from the beginning a polarized head to head race of the current President Bolsonaro vs. former president Lula leading to a runoff voting. That's why we scheduled our event "Brazil after the elections – a safe haven?" for the beginning of November, once we will have a clear view in which direction the Latin American giant is heading.

Personally, I have warned everyone about the rather unreliable poll predictions and here is our preliminary take, which I am happy to discuss with my peers and all participants in our forthcoming event:

• As anticipated the race for the presidency is polarized & open – Bolsonaro performed well in economic powerhouses like São Paulo.
• About 80% of the senator (70% congressmen) candidates selected by the current president have won. The most prominent being Brazil´s best campaign partner Senator & astronaut Marcos Pontes
• Now why is there such strong support for "Tropical Trump" Bolsonaro? To understand this, we need to differentiate the politics from a person. The business community considers the current president basically the "lesser evil" as Brazil is recovering relatively well from the Corona crisis and important reforms have been pushed forward. While a lot of Brazilians would say that Bolsonaro should improve his communication (but overall the government is doing a good job), his opponent has since the famous Operation Car Wash literally fallen from grace. Lula quite openly supports a socialist agenda like his "sister in spirit" Kirchner in Argentina. While the fear that Brazil could turn into Argentina or even Venezuela is probably exaggerated, Lula is, based on various insider information, in our humble view truly not the savior that he tries to play on the world stage.

Our prediction: Whoever wins won´t stop the increasing geo-political and socio-economic relevance of Brazil.