Why Flavio Bolsonaro outperformed the polls in Brazil’s election

A late right-wing shift, a banking scandal and economic frustration may be behind Bolsonaro’s last-minute gains, experts say. Save Share With three weeks to go until Brazil’s presidential runoff, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva finds himself in a weaker position than he — or most pollsters — had expected. A second round of voting was widely predicted. But most recent polls had Lula entering a runoff from first place, putting him about three percentage points ahead of rival Senator Flavio Bolsonaro. Instead, Bolsonaro took about 47 percent ofthe vote on Sundayto Lula’s 45 percent, a reversal that surprised analysts and raised questions about what happened in the final days of the campaign, and what the polls may have missed. Carlos Pereira, a political scientist at the Getulio Vargas Foundation think-tank in Brazil, believes part of the answer lies in a late shift among voters who had planned to support smaller right-wing candidates. Bolsonaro himself had said he was banking on exactly that, telling reporters on election day that he expected a “protest vote” from people who might have otherwise backed another candidate but were united in their opposition to Lula. “Usually, voters, they vote [sincerely] in the first round, and they vote strategically in the second round,” Pereira told Al Jazeera. This time, he said, some voters who were planning to cast their ballot for candidates like the former governor of the central state of Goias, Ronaldo Caiado, and businessman and founder of the right-wing Free Brazil Movement, Renan Santos, appear to have made the strategic choice earlier. “They thought, ‘Let’s try to resolve this election right now,’” Pereira said. “If you’re gonna vote for Flavio anyway in the second round, why not vote for him right now?” That early consolidation could also matter in the runoff. Political analyst Rafael Favetti told Reuters news agency that some of the support Bolsonaro would have usually picked up only in a second round had already been “front-loaded,” potentially leaving him less room to expand his coalition. Another factor, Pereira said, was theBanco Master scandal, a sprawling alleged banking fraud that rattled both campaigns in the final weeks, touching figures across the political spectrum. Among them was Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who oversaw the case that sent Bolsonaro’s father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, to prison....