Brazilian presidential and general elections 2022 (1st round: October 2nd, 2nd round: October 30th)

[Pivaru]

There'll be a second round in Bahia between Jerônimo Rodrigues (PT) and ACM Neto (UNIÃO). ACM is the former mayor of Salvador and had lead the polls until yesterday, but today, Jerônimo pulled ahead and got 49,3% of the votes, almost finishing the whole thing in the first round.

Only one more gubernatorial election to be called, in Maranhão, where Carlos Brandão (PSB), the incumbent governor is leading with 51% of the vote.

[Pivaru]

Unsurprisingly, PDT has just announced they have unanimously decided to back Lula. Ciro said earlier that he'd follow the party, so he should be supporting Lula as well.

On other news, PT was trying to get Rodrigo Garcia, the defeated governor of São Paulo to endorse Haddad in the states gubernatorial race. Apparently, their plan was for Garcia to help Haddad, while Edegar Pretto, the Worker's Party candidate in Rio Grande do Sul would help Eduardo Leite, who's from the same party as Garcia. There were even some reports about Lula considering to endorse Leite and staying neutral on Pernambuco gubernatorial race (Arraes vs Lyra, the later also being from Garcia and Leite's party, PSDB).

That said, it doesn't seem like this will pan out, the president of the Rio Grande do Sul PSDB has already endorsed Bolsonaro, Leite declared neutrality and Garcia seems to be planning to endorse Tarcísio instead of Haddad. It's still not clear if Garcia will take a stance on the presidential race, Bolsonaro said they'd discuss this today.

[Pivaru]

Rodrigo Garcia, the governor of São Paulo, has just endorsed Bolsonaro for president and Tarcisio for governor during a livestream with them both, claiming he'll give them "unconditional support". That said, it doesn't seem like Tarcisio wants Garcia to campaign with him, he said the support from PSDB voters is to be expected, but he doesn't really see a point in appearing with the governor since he "was always fighting for change" (keep in mind that Garcia's party has ruled São Paulo for the last 28 years).

Among the four parties that supported Tebet's bid for president, three seem to have already decided their position in regards to the second round. PSDB is letting their members just do whatever they want, Cidadania is going to support Lula and MDB will also let their members just do whatever. Tebet herself is probably going to endorse Lula, but I have no doubt there will be pro-Bolsonaro factions inside the party (just look at the mayor of São Paulo, who's defending that the SP MDB gets behind Tarcisio). Podemos is the fourth party that supported Tebet, but I haven't heard anything about them, they'll probably just stay neutral like they did in 2018.

PSD will keep their neutrality and let their members support whoever they want. There are both Lula supporters, like Otto Alencar, and Bolsonaro supporters, like Ratinho Jr, inside PSD, so this decision isn't unexpected, they're just repeating what they did in the first round. At the end of the day, we all know the party leader, Gilberto Kassab, will just sell his support to whoever ends up getting elected.

There's also PTB, the party that ran the priest guy for president and the least important people I'm talking about here, they'll support Bolsonaro, obviously. They haven't announced it officially yet, but they should get around to doing until the end of the week. That whole party's purpose nowadays seems to be housing the most extreme bolsonaristas out there.

Also, the first second round poll will be released tomorrow, assuming anyone still cares about what they have to say. It will be an Ipec poll.

[Pivaru]

More second round endorsements:

José Serra, PSDB's candidate for the presidency in 2002 and 2010 has endorsed Lula for the presidency but Tarcísio for governor of São Paulo. Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the president who was in office right before Lula, also endorsed the former president.

It's doubtful many people change their votes solely based on endorsements, but it can help to open center-right voters minds towards the idea of voting for Lula. It also helps Lula to portray himself not only as the PT presidential candidate, but also the leader of a broad democratic front against Bolsonaro.

As for Bolsonaro, he has been endorsed by Ibaneis Rocha, the reelected governor of Distrito Federal, hardly surprising. Bolsonaro will be meeting with people from União Brasil to discuss tomorrow. União Brasil elected two governors and has a few more still running in second rounds. Apparently, his plan is to portray his alliance with the União Brasil people and the governor's from southeastern states as the "real democratic front" or something like that.

Edit: Not making a new post for this, Ricardo Nunes, the mayor of São Paulo and the MDB from the state have decided to back Tarcisio, unsurprising given the news we saw in the last few days. It seems like they'll also endorse Bolsonaro, but they'll wait a few days before announcing it since Tebet officially endorsed Lula today.

Talks have started within União Brasil over what to do in the second round. Luciano Bivar, the party's president, would like to support Lula, but few agree with him and he doesn't really have enough power to enforce the decision over the whole party. Many members have defended the party should stand with Bolsonaro, such as the Mato Grosso governor Mauro Mendes and the governor of Goias, Ronaldo Caiado (in fact, Caiado endorsed Bolsonaro earlier today). Finally, there's the group that wants the party to stay neutral, letting the members individually decide for themselves. The most relevant member in this last group is ACM Neto, who is currently the União candidate in the second round of the Bahia gubernatorial election. Bahia is a state that votes heavily for PT, so associating with Bolsonaro here would be declaring his defeat (which is already very likely even if he tries to ignore Bolsonaro).

[Pivaru]

New ipec poll, first poll of the second round:

Total votes:
Lula (PT) - 51%
Bolsonaro (PL) - 43%
Blank/Null - 4%
Undecided - 2%

Valid votes:
Lula (PT) - 55%
Bolsonaro (PL) - 45%

In case anyone is curious to how this compares to the pre-first round polls, looking at the last Ipec poll before the election, Lula fell 1 point in the total votes and 3 in the valid votes. Bolsonaro rose 6 points in the total votes and 3 in the valid votes.

50% of voters said they wouldn't vote for Bolsonaro, 40% said they wouldn't vote for Lula.

[Pivaru]

New ipec poll, first poll of the second round:

Total votes:
Lula (PT) - 51%
Bolsonaro (PL) - 43%
Blank/Null - 4%
Undecided - 2%

Valid votes:
Lula (PT) - 55%
Bolsonaro (PL) - 45%

In case anyone is curious to how this compares to the pre-first round polls, looking at the last Ipec poll before the election, Lula fell 1 point in the total votes and 3 in the valid votes. Bolsonaro rose 6 points in the total votes and 3 in the valid votes.

50% of voters said they wouldn't vote for Bolsonaro, 40% said they wouldn't vote for Lula.

Some more data from the poll:

Gender
Women:
Lula - 53%
Bolsonaro - 40%

Men:
Lula - 49%
Bolsonaro - 45%

Age
16-24:
Lula - 54%
Bolsonaro - 34%

25-34:
Bolsonaro - 49%
Lula - 46%

35-44:
Lula - 52%
Bolsonaro - 43%

45-59:
Lula - 53%
Bolsonaro - 41%

60+:
Lula - 50%
Bolsonaro - 41%

Income (by minimum wage)
1 MW or less:
Lula - 64%
Bolsonaro - 29%

1-2 MWs:
Lula - 55%
Bolsonaro - 41%

2-5 MWs:
Bolsonaro - 49%
Lula - 44%

5 MWs or more:
Bolsonaro - 65%
Lula - 30%

Region of residence
Northeast:
Lula - 69%
Bolsonaro - 26%

North/Central-West:
Bolsonaro - 53%
Lula - 43%

Southeast:
Lula - 47%
Jair Bolsonaro - 45%

South:
Bolsonaro - 54%
Lula - 37%

[Pivaru]

New Quaest poll:

Total votes:
Lula (PT) - 48%
Bolsonaro (PL) - 41%
Undecided - 7%
Blank/null - 4%

Valid votes:
Lula (PT) - 54%
Bolsonaro - 46%

50% wouldn't vote for Bolsonaro (down 5 from the last Quaest poll), 41% wouldn't vote for Lula (down 3 from the last Quaest poll)

[Pivaru]

Michel Temer, the former president who took over after Dilma's impeachment, was going to endorse Bolsonaro, but it seems he gave up after his daughters asked him not to. That said, he'll also not support Lula, he'll just stay neutral.

União Brasil decided to let their members take any position they desire. Most of the party prefers Bolsonaro, but this stance was taken mostly so ACM Neto isn't completely DOA in the Bahia gubernatorial election second round.

In Pernambuco, Marília Arraes is getting endorsed by Lula, PT and PSB, it makes sense since she's been supporting Lula since the first round. Her opponent, Raquel Lyra, asked the courts to suspend the free electoral advertising time on TV and radio, since she's still grieving the death of her husband. The courts have denied her request claiming that for such a thing to be done, Arraes' alliance would have to agree, and they didn't.

Despite underperforming quite a bit during the first round, I assume Arraes is still the favorite in this race, but I must admit I'm not particularly knowledgeable about Pernambuco politics, I'd have to ask my friends from there to be more certain. Arraes is part of a political family, being the granddaughter of former governor Miguel Arraes. Lula won Pernambuco by a lot, so his support here should help.

Datafolha will release their first second round poll later today. They'll also be releasing a poll regarding the second round in São Paulo.

[Pivaru]

São Paulo gubernatorial election poll (Datafolha)

Tarcisio de Freitas (Republicanos) - 50%
Fernando Haddad (PT) - 40%
Blank/Null - 6%
Undecided - 4%

Valid votes:
Tarcisio - 55%
Haddad - 45%

51% of voters wouldn't vote for Haddad, 39% wouldn't vote for Tarcisio.

Can't say I'm surprised, I always suspected something like this would happen.

[Pivaru]

Datafolha poll, presidential election in São Paulo:

Bolsonaro (PL) - 46%
Lula (PT) - 44%
Blank/null - 8%
Undecided - 2%

Edit: Globo published at first that it was Lula 46% and Bolsonaro 44%, but they just corrected it

[Pivaru]

The Lula campaign has been discussing internally how to appease evangelical votes, the answer they have landed on seems to releasing a letter to them, similar to Lula's 2002 "letter to the Brazilian people", which helped him to soften his image ahead of that election. The new letter was elaborated by senator Eliziane Gama and, according to G1, its main points are the following:

- Freedom of religion will be guaranteed
- No churches will be closed
- Laws which go against the christian values, family and life won't be sent to congress
- Prejudice against evangelicals will be fought
- Evangelicals will have an "effective participation" in the government
- Evangelicals won't be barred from participating in the creation of public policy, in particular, those related to drug policy
- Social projects will be valued

The plan was for it to be released today, but it got delayed to Saturday, apparently due to internal disagreements in regards to the contents of the document. A lot of PT members are afraid that, in it's current form, the letter will be used as ammunition by the Bolsonaro camp, will be ignored by the evangelical voters and will anger the more progressive parts of PT's base. Tbf, I don't think these fears are unfounded, the idea of conceding stuff to evangelicals just seems counter intuitive from my point of view, I mean, it's very clear at this point most of them will just not vote for PT, at best they believe Lula is a closeted communist waiting to legalize drugs, abortion and corrupt the children. At worst, they believe that the guy is Satan's personal servant and is preparing to persecute christians in Brazil. I just don't think there's a lot to be gained here and it's hard to see a way to actually persuade these people into actually voting for Lula.

This part of the party defends that the version of the letter that comes out Saturday is more scaled back, mostly just addressing the whole "Lula will close the churches" conspiracy theory and defending freedom of religion. We'll see how this turns out on the 15th.

[Pivaru]

New Ipec presidential poll:

Total votes:
Lula (PT) - 51% (=)
Bolsonaro (PL) - 42% (-1)
Blank/null - 5% (+1)
Undecided - 2%

Valid votes:
Lula (PT): 55% (=)
Bolsonaro (PL): 45% (=)

[Pivaru]

The state of Alagoas just got their fourth governor in the year which could end up being important as this is one of the states in which there will be a second round in the gubernatorial election.

They started the year with Renan Jr, a member of the influential Calheiros family, son of Renan Calheiros, a senator and former president of the Brazilian senate. Junior resigned in April because Brazilian electoral law said he couldn't run for senate if he didn't.

After resigning, there was a problem, there was no vice-governor, the guy who was supposed to occupy such position, Luciano Barbosa, resigned in 2020 to become the mayor of the state's second biggest city, Arapiraca. Due to that, the president of the Court of Justice of Alagoas, Klever Loureiro, took office while the state's legislative body tried to elect someone new.

In may, they elected Paulo Dantas and José Wanderley Neto for governor and vice-governor respectively, both are allies of the Calheiros. Today, a minister of Brazil's Superior Court of Justice (also known as STJ) decided to suspend Dantas after the police decided to investigate him for a supposed corruption scheme in which he would have diverted R$54 million. The police seized R$264,000 reais from him. The new governor is the Wanderley guy. Keep in mind, Dantas is currently running for a full term. Renan Calheiros criticized this whole operation and said Dantas was a victim of the "bolsonarista gestapo".

His opponent is Rodrigo Cunha, a senator elected in 2018. Cunha is an ally of Arthur Lira, the president of the Chamber of Deputies and a member of another important political family in state politics. The whole race is basically just a way for the Liras and the Calheiros to see who will rule the state for the next 4 years. Cunha's campaign has actually recorded an ad with Dantas' father in which he called his son incompetent, corrupt and, just for good measure, a traitor.

The Superior Court of Justice will analyze this whole thing on Thursday, until then, Wanderley stays as governor. Paulo is still allowed to be a candidate regardless of this case, but as you might be able to guess, getting caught in a situation like this generally tends not to look all that good during the campaign for an election which is less than three weeks away. So far, Dantas was the frontrunner, in fact, a poll released by Real Time Big Data a few hours after the operation said he had 59% of the valid votes against 41% from Rodrigo Cunha. Curious to see if this will end up affecting this race and perhaps even give Cunha a chance of winning.


Now just briefly giving some quick Rio de Janeiro news, it seems like Romario, the senator who got reelected this year is not going to campaign for Bolsonaro's reelection campaign during the second round even though he is a member of Bolsonaro's party. Here's the thing, Rio had not one, not two but three bolsonarista candidates running for senate, Romario, Clarissa Garotinho and Daniel Silveira. This last guy actually got into a big controversy for posting a video in which he advocated for closing the Supreme Court. Due to that, Supreme Court minister Alexandre de Moraes issued an arrest warrant in early 2021. In April of this year, the court sentenced him to 8 years and 9 months of jail time, also removing his eligibility in the process. Bolsonaro immediately issued a pardon, which got him out of jail but didn't restore his political rights.

The problem is that, despite not being allowed, Silveira decided to run for senator, being the PTB's candidate in the state. Bolsonaro didn't do much to convince him not to do it, in fact, on election day, Silveira posted a video of himself and Bolsonaro meeting where the president said "I voted for you". Romario, understandably, was a bit mad about this, I mean, even if Silveira had gotten the most votes, he wouldn't be able to take office. Due to this, Romario decided to not collaborate with the president's reelection campaign from now on, that said, he won't help Lula and said he'll still vote for Bolsonaro.

[Pivaru]

Ipec statewide polls:

São Paulo:

Gubernatorial:
Total votes
Tarcisio (Republicanos) - 46%
Haddad (PT) - 41%
Blank/null - 9%
Undecided - 4%

Valid votes
Tarcisio (Republicanos) - 53%
Haddad (PT) - 47%

Presidential:
Bolsonaro (PL) - 45%
Lula (PT) - 44%
Blank/null - 8%
Undecided - 3%


Pernambuco:

Gubernatorial:
Total votes:
Raquel Lyra (PSDB) - 50%
Marilia Arraes (SD) - 42%
Blank/null - 4%
Undecided - 3%

Valid votes:
Raquel Lyra (PSDB) - 54%
Marilia Arraes (SD) - 46%

Presidential:
Lula (PT) - 68%
Bolsonaro (PL) - 25%
Blank/null - 4%
Undecided - 2%

[Pivaru]

Quaest presidential poll:

Lula (PT) - 49%
Bolsonaro (PL) - 41%
Blank/null - 6%
Undecided - 4%

Among likely voters:
Lula (PT) - 53%
Bolsonaro (PL) - 47%


50% of voters wouldn't vote for Bolsonaro, 42% wouldn't vote for Lula. Tebet voters prefer Lula (47% Lula, 18% Bolsonaro, 31% none). Ciro voters also prefer Lula (54% Lula, 25% Bolsonaro, 19% none).


Atlas presidential poll: (their first in the second round)

Total votes:
Lula (PT ) - 51,1%
Bolsonaro - 46,5%
Don't know/blank/null - 2,4%

Valid votes:
Lula (PT) - 52,4%
Bolsonaro (PL) - 47,6%

[Pivaru]

New Datafolha poll:

Total votes:
Lula (PT) - 49% (=)
Bolsonaro (PL) - 44% (=)
Blank/null - 5% (-1)
Undecided - 1% (-1)

Valid votes:
Lula (PT) - 53% (=)
Bolsonaro (PL) - 47% (=)

[Pivaru]

Ipec poll in Rio Grande do Sul

Gubernatorial:
Total votes:
Eduardo Leite (PSDB) - 50%
Onyx Lorenzoni (PL) - 43%
Blank/null - 4%
Undecided/didn't answer - 3%

Valid votes:
Eduardo Leite (PSDB) - 54%
Onyx Lorenzoni (PL) - 46%

Presidential:
Lula (PT) - 50%
Bolsonaro (PL) - 50%


Leite's numbers make sense going strictly by logic, I mean, the third place candidate, Edegar Pretto, was from PT and didn't get in the second round by about 2000 votes. It's hard to imagine a Pretto voter going to Lorenzoni in the second round. That said, every other poll in this race so far has shown Onyx leading, usually within the margin of error.

If Leite does end up winning, he'd be the first Rio Grande do Sul governor to ever be reelected.

[Pivaru]

João Amoêdo, the presidential candidate from the libertarian Novo party in 2018, endorsed Lula today. While it may seem surprising for a libertarian candidate to endorse Lula, anyone who has followed Amoêdo and Novo for the past 4 years would not be surprised by this. Ever since Bolsonaro won in 2018, Amoêdo has become dedicated to opposing him, a lot of the time in pretty non libertarian ways (he supported lockdowns and mandatory vaccinations for example). As a result, Amoêdo ended up leaving his leadership positions in 2020 and became progressively more isolated in the party which he originally helped to found. In response, basically every other Novo politician has denounced his position (with some even calling for his expulsion) and the party's official twitter account called his remarks "regrettable".

Tomorrow the first debate from the second round will happen. It should be more of what we already saw in the first round, which is to say, Bolsonaro taking an offensive stance and attacking Lula on corruption and such, maybe he'll try to talk about social issues like abortion too, who knows.

[Pivaru]

Atlas statewide polls:

Minas Gerais:

Presidential
Lula (PT) - 50.2%
Bolsonaro (PL) - 47.7%
Blank/null/undecided - 2.1%

(valid votes: Lula  51,3 - Bolsonaro 48,7)

Rio de Janeiro:

Presidential
Bolsonaro (PL) - 51.2%
Lula (PT) - 43.4%
Blank/null/undecided - 5.4%

(valid votes: Bolsonaro 54,1 - Lula 45,9)


São Paulo:

Gubernatorial
Tarcisio (Republicanos) - 53.2%
Fernando Haddad (PT): 42.4%
Blank/null: 2%
Undecided: 2.5%

(valid votes: Tarcisio 55,6 - Haddad 44,6)

Presidential
Bolsonaro (PL) - 51.9%
Lula (PT) - 44.7%
Blank/null/undecided - 3.5%

(valid votes: Bolsonaro 53,7 - Lula 46,3)


The debate starts in about 40 minutes, Bolsonaro got into a scandal over the last day, getting accused of being a pedophile, due to that, there were some rumors that his ministers were trying to convince him to skip the debate. Bolsonaro is already at the studio, so this rumor ended up being a nothingburger. As for the scandal, it seems very clear at this point that it was one more case of him expressing an idea horribly, the Superior Electoral Court has already ruled that the clip was taken out of context and due to that, the video can't be used in political ads.

[Pivaru]

The debate just ended.

I find it hard to say with any kind of certainty who won the debate. Sure, I could just say what I personally thought, but at the end of the day, both Lula and Bolsonaro need to do is to appeal to undecided voters and people who are not sure about their current choice. The problem is that something like 90+% of voters are already sure of their choice.

Aside from that, all I really have to say is that I didn't like the format Band chose for the debate.

[Pivaru]

CNT/MDA poll

Total votes:
Lula (PT) - 48.1%
Bolsonaro (PL) - 41.8%
Blank/null - 6%
Undecided - 4.1%

Valid votes:
Lula (PT) - 53.5%
Bolsonaro (PL) - 46.5%

50.1% of voters wouldn't vote for Bolsonaro, 44.4% wouldn vote for Lula.

95.1% of Bolsonaro voters are sure they will vote for him, 94.2% of Lula voters are sure they'll vote for the former president, 79.3% of blank/null voters are sure of their choice.

[Pivaru]

New Ipec poll

Total votes:
Lula (PT) - 50% (-1)
Bolsonaro (PL) - 43% (+1)
Blank/null - 5% (=)
Undecided - 2% (=)

Valid votes:
Lula (PT) - 54% (-1)
Bolsonaro (PL) - 46% (+1)

46% of voters wouldn't vote for Bolsonaro (-2), 41% wouldn't vote for Lula (-1).

93% of voters are sure of their vote.

39% of voters think Bolsonaro's government is bad or terrible (-2), 37% think it is great or good (-1), 23% think it is regular (+4).

[Pivaru]

Atlas Rio Grande do Sul polls:

Gubernatorial:

Total votes:
Eduardo Leite (PSDB) - 47,3%
Onyx Lorenzoni (PL) - 43,6%
Blank/null/undecided - 9,1%

Valid votes:
Eduardo Leite (PSDB) - 52,04%
Onyx Lorenzoni (PL) - 47,96%

Presidential:

Total votes:
Jair Bolsonaro (PL) - 51,3%
Lula (PT) - 47%
Blank/null/undecided: 1,7%

Valid votes:
Jair Bolsonaro (PL) - 52,2%
Lula (PT) - 47,8%

[Pivaru]

New Abrapel/Ipespe poll

Total votes:
Lula (PT) - 49% (-1)
Bolsonaro (PL) - 43% (=)
Blank/null - 6% (+2)
Undecided -  2% (=)

Valid votes:
Lula (PT) - 53% (-1)
Bolsonaro (PL) - 47% (+1)

48% of voters wouldn't vote for Bolsonaro (-1), 45% wouldn't vote for Lula (same as the last Abrapel/Ipespe poll)

[Pivaru]

New Quaest poll:

Total votes:
Lula (PT) - 47% (-2)
Bolsonaro (PL) - 42% (+1)
Blank/Null - 6% (=)
Undecided - 5% (+1)

Valid votes:
Lula (PT) - 52.8% (-0.6)
Bolsonaro (PL) - 47.2% (+0.6)

46% of people wouldn't vote for Bolsonaro (-4), 43% wouldn't vote for Lula (+1)