The overseas results are also interesting. For some reason, Ventura won in Namibia, and polled almost 32% in South Africa. In Europe, Marcelo performed exactly the same as in 2016 and Ana Gomes got basically the same share of vote Sampaio da Nóvoa had in 2016. Marcelo dominated the Americas, even in Brazil (I was expecting here a strong Ventura vote, maybe a "Bolsonaro effect", or overseas voters in Brazil are just still very loyal to the PSD). In Asia and Australia, the results were basically the same as in 2016, with few flips and the only big one was in Timor where Gomes won handily over Marcelo, she was Portugal's ambassador in Jakarta in the late 90's and had an important role in Timor's independence.
All results here:
https://www.presidenciais2021.mai.gov.pt/resultados/estrangeiro
Nah, the “right-wing populism” wave thing expresses itself on a very particular way in Latin America compared to Europe or the US. I didn’t expect Ventura to do a lot better in Brazil, opposed to how well Bolsonaro overperformed in Portugal.
In Europe, its main particularity is that people who always liked leftists and communist parties are being swayed by these people, who gives them increased populist rhetoric to be excited about.
In US there is not a “left” to say the exact same thing but if you look at the demographics it’s somewhat of a similar logic, with rural areas and working class people shifting more to those kinds of politics. Like it happens in Europe.
Meanwhile, Bolsonaro is more like a more weakass wannabe version of Pinochet. He’s not associated to a moderated “economic populism” like these other right-wing populists in the world somewhat adopt in order to not repel populist voters who happen to like social populism as well but aren’t necessarily friendly to economic austerity. He may even pursue that strategy from now on considering his poll numbers right now, but the people who voted him in were the opposite of rural small town people who happen to like big spending but are socially conservative.
