By LEONARDO SACRAMENTO*
Those who bet solely on 2022 may be playing the game of Bolsonaro and Bolsonarism
The difference in voting intentions between Lula and Bolsonaro fell for the first and second rounds. There were 7 points for the second round in the survey Power 360. You can't play to the margin of error. Bolsonaro reached a rejection ceiling and Lula reached a vote intention ceiling. Those who bet solely on 2022 may be playing the game of Bolsonaro and Bolsonarism. In fact, today is your only alternative.
The mistake of those who make this bet is the optimistic view that overestimates electoral polls so far from the election, one year to be precise. Electoral polls, with such a long time, should be seen as trends, and not as determinant data, as if the election were a month from now. The optimistic view is similar to that seen in the 2018 election, when militants believed that Bolsonaro would be the ideal candidate for the second round.
As a trend, the data are worse for Lula. His voting intentions are predominantly in the poorest electorate, where Bolsonaro aims his cannons with Auxílio-Brasil, which, like Bolsa-Família, tends to be limited in terms of the number of beneficiaries. The electorate immersed in misery is outside any system, as the Emergency Aid proved. Those who are in misery have historically tended not to vote. Therefore, it is very likely, with the spread of poverty, that the votes for Lula will decrease, quantitatively clashing with the intention of votes in the polls. On the other hand, Auxílio Brasil, focused on families with income close to one salary and two minimum wages, tends to produce some positive results for Bolsonaro. Which is hard to measure, but unlikely not to produce something.
Those who are in misery do not vote basically for lack of perspective. Miserable tends to swell abstention, and I have no doubt that Bolsonaro, at this moment, is betting on misery as a productive factor, since polls have shown that the economy factor, with today's constraints, has possibly reached its limit. Of course, the conditioning factors can change, with a tendency to worsen (energy crisis, inflation and decrease in income). But they can also improve for those who have been without anything for two, three or five years, such as the reduction of unemployment through informal work, according to the Pnad, published by in September by the IBGE. It's informal, but it's something.
According to the research, in a scenario with Moro, Bolsonaro literally inherits his votes for the second round, which indicates that there is room for an alliance, albeit implicit, between Bolsonaristas and Lava Jatistas, as occurred in 2018. With a well-executed campaign , anti-PTism can induce the middle class to engage in electoral campaigns, providing an alliance with the “third way” in the second round, or a satisfactory division for Bolsonaro. This scenario, in turn, revives the “third way”, not electorally, but politically, since it induces the already centrist Lula to open more regional and national negotiations, allowing her to negotiate and impose continuities in economic policy. After all, there is no free lunch. If Bolsonaro wins, economic policy continues. For the “third way”, it is a reasonable bet to contribute to Bolsonaro's electoral improvement and/or Lula's worsening, as it puts him in the game with greater negotiating capacity.
Electoralism is so politically reduced that it does not realize that, without a Front against Bolsonaro, even for an impeachment that will not come, there is no one to support its rejection. And without something to guide it, it tends to stagnate or diminish. Who, at this moment, is guiding Bolsonaro's rejection?
*Leonardo Sacramento He holds a PhD in Education from UFSCar and is president of the Association of Teaching Professionals of Ribeirão Preto. Book author The mercantile university: a study on the public university and private capital (Appris).
