RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The latest opinion polls have confirmed that the state is the main focus of rejection of Bolsonarism in the country. Half of Bahians consider the President’s management bad or terrible. In the capital Salvador, 62 percent reject the federal administration.
Data from the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) show that Bahia was only behind São Paulo and was the second state to receive the most emergency aid during the pandemic, with 61.2 percent of beneficiaries. A survey by DataPoder 360 Institute, disclosed in July, showed that the President won five percentage points in his approval, rising to 27 percent. But in the state, 50 percent of Bahians reject him.
Bolsonaro’s situation is even more serious in Salvador. No capital rejects the President’s government as much as the city. The 62 percent rate is ten percentage points above the figures registered in Porto Alegre, the second capital that most rejects Bolsonarism, according to an IBOPE survey released in October.
Improving his image in the Northeast has been one of Bolsonaro’s priorities before the 2022 elections. Salvador is the city with the fourth-highest number of voters in the country: over 1.8 million.
Bahia, with over ten million voters, is the fourth electoral center among all Brazilian states. In 2018, PT (Workers’ Party) candidate Fernando Haddad won 72 percent of the vote in the runoff against the current President. Bolsonaro won in only four of Bahia’s 417 cities. In Salvador, the President lost in all electoral zones.
The surveys’ results point to historical trends that refer to two prominent political movements in the state. One of them is the support for PT, today represented by two figures who work more independently from the party’s national directory.
Both Governor Rui Costa and Senator Jaques Wagner hold enough political capital to make their own choices in the state, such as when they chose Major Denice Santiago to run for the Salvador City Hall. Moreover, they are able to use the support they have with the local population to compete with Bolsonaro at the national level. Costa has clashed head-on with Bolsonarism on several occasions, as witnessed throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.
The other political force in the state is the Mayor of Salvador, ACM Neto (DEM -Democrats), the embodiment of Carlismo (a term that refers to a group formed in the State of Bahia around the strong leadership of ACM Neto’s grandfather). The political muscle of Antônio Carlos Magalhães’ grandson, former governor of Bahia for three terms, points to a first-round election as Mayor of Bruno Reis, vice-governor during his administration. During the pandemic, ACM Neto also became Bolsonaro’s political opponent because he considered that the President was hindering the implementation of measures to fight the novel coronavirus.
The unification of ACM and Costa’s discourse mobilized the electorate that approves both political figures to stand against the President. In Salvador alone, Costa holds 63 percent approval, while ACM holds 73 percent, according to IBOPE.
In 2022, Costa and ACM will be on opposing sides in the presidential race, but both will stand against Bolsonarism. The governor has already made his name available as a pre-candidate and tends to stay with PT in the electoral race.
ACM is president of DEM, a center-right party that has worked together with São Paulo Governor João Doria (PSDB – Brazilian Social Democratic Party), one of the candidates for the Planalto Palace. This week, DEM figures also nodded in favor of the future presidential candidacy of TV host Luciano Huck.
In interviews, Costa and ACM have already declared their intention to form a democratic and supra-partisan front to defeat Bolsonarism, but no specific action has been taken so far in this direction. Should an understanding be reached, it should only be expressed in a potential second round
Source: Veja