RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Beating leftist presidential candidates in Brazil’s Northeast has been an impossible task for opponents since former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva established social income transfer programs in his government, such as the Bolsa Família (Family Grant), and launched specific projects for the region, like the never-ending transposition of the São Francisco River.
With the Workers’ Party (PT) out of the Planalto Palace four years ago and power in the hands of its greatest rival, however, the leftists cities are gradually becoming less inhospitable to the party’s challengers.
Among the R$600 (US$120) emergency aid payments to lessen the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, the efforts to extend Bolsa Família and rename it Renda Brasil (Brazil Income), and trips to the region, including the inauguration of transposition works in Ceará, President Jair Bolsonaro is beginning to curb resistance to his name among Northeasterners.
An exclusive survey conducted by the Paraná Research Institute between July 18th and 21st shows that the Northeast is still the region where the Bolsonaro government is least approved and most disapproved. However, two years before the 2022 election, it is noteworthy that there is a growing number of northeasterners who say they approve of the federal administration and a decrease of those who disapprove of it, compared to the preceding survey, conducted between April 27th and 29th.
Three months ago, 30.3 percent of the Northeast population said they approved the government, a figure that rose to 39.4 percent in July, a 9.1 point increase. Among those who said they disapprove of the Bolsonaro government, the proportion dropped from 66.1 to 56.8 percent, a 9.3 point drop. Thus, regional fluctuations were higher than the national average, where approval rose from 44 to 47.1 percent and disapproval declined from 51.7 to 48.1 percent. The survey’s error margin in relation to the Northeast is 4.5 percentage points, plus or minus.
In electoral terms, the survey shows that Jair Bolsonaro has gained strength and collected northeastern votes in all the first-round scenarios tested. Despite the fact that he is neck and neck in the survey with ex-mayor of São Paulo Fernando Haddad, the President still needs to cover a lot of ground before catching up with Lula among the region’s electorate, even though the ex-President is now unelectable under the Ficha Limpa (Clean Record) law. In a scenario that pitted the leftist against other candidates, Lula scores 34.1 percent of preference in the Northeast (38.4 percent in April) and Bolsonaro holds 18.7 percent (it was 16.6 percent).
In the most likely scenario, where Haddad is the PT candidate and his former Minister Sérgio Moro is also in the race, the President comes out ahead, with 21.6 percent of voting intentions (four points higher than in April), while the leftist ranges 0.5 points higher and holds 20.3 percent. The two are technically tied with ex-Minister Ciro Gomes whose electoral base is Ceará, and who dropped two points and holds an 18.7 percent preference. Moro dropped 2.7 points and scores 11.5 percent.
In another scenario, without Moro, Fernando Haddad scores a 21.2 percent preference among the Northeasterners and numerically tops Jair Bolsonaro, who advanced 1.1 points to 20.7 percent, while Ciro, with a 1.1 point drop, scores 20 percent. Well-known for his 20 years in prime time on TV Globo, Luciano Huck comes next, with 8.2 percent.
North and Midwest lead government approval
The Paraná Survey shows that the South is no longer the main Bolsonarist support base in Brazil and has given way to the North-Center-West axis. According to the exclusive survey, the Southerners were the only voters among whom approval for the President fell (from 50.5 percent in April to 49.7 percent in July) and disapproval grew (from 42 to 44. 6 percent). In the same period, the percentage of voters in the North and Midwest who approve of the administration rose from 48.7 to 53.6 percent, an increase of 4.9 points, while the number of those who disapprove decreased 4.2 points, from 46.4 to 42.2 percent.
In the Southeast, whose 64.7 million voters represent 43 percent of the national electorate, the approval and disapproval of the Bolsonaro government varied little and the balance between the two positions is maintained. Those who approve increased from 48.7 to 48.9 percent and those who disapprove decreased from 47.8 to 45.9 percent.
Source: Veja