by Matheus Leal
On the evening of the first round of the 2026 elections, as the first numbers began to appear, a sense of déjà vu hung in the air. The results defied the projections made by nearly every polling institute in the days leading up to the vote. This perception was confirmed in the subsequent hours.
This recurring phenomenon bears the hallmarks and contours of recent elections, now with new contemporary clothing.
A black and white image of voting machines on top of tanks, making the connection between the 1964 coup in Brazil and today's election (Credit: Sul21)
We’re talking about the recent past. But we are living in times when each year is equivalent to an era, given the sheer volume of things that have happened in Brazil’s recent history, where each year feels like an entire decade.
So it may be worth a brief recap.
The Brazil that emerged following the 2016 ouster of President Dilma was built on the promise that the center and the traditional right, who had usurped power, would manage to forge a pact and ease the tensions gripping the nation.
To this end, then President Michel Temer dismantled the state and its policies through reforms and initiatives that only deepened the crisis and exacerbated inequalities. Corruption surged, and backroom deals, involving the Supreme Court and everyone else, were struck.
But they failed to deliver the promised political stability.
On the contrary, they created a cozy nest where the eggs of ravens were hatched. Ravens that would eventually peck out the very eyes of those who nurtured them.
The rise of Jair Bolsonaro, spearheading a movement that bears his own name, drew strength from the vacuum of legitimacy and the institutional crisis that followed the coup against president Dilma Rousseff.
With former President Lula imprisoned and his party’s public image severely eroded in the wake of the Car Wash investigation, the 2018 elections simmered like a pressure cooker, boiling over to usher in a new era of authoritarianism and extremism. Within this context, it would be naive to claim that Bolsonaro’s victory was improbable, or that his faction would fail to secure a significant number of seats in the legislative and executive branches.
What came as a shock was the total failure of nearly every polling institute. They were unable to gauge the strength of the “outsiders” at the time, like Wilson Witzel in Rio de Janeiro and Romeu Zema in Minas Gerais, who went on to win the governor’s mansions in major states. We also have to remember former President Dilma Rousseff’s defeat in her bid for a Senate seat in Minas Gerais. She had been leading in the polls, yet failed to win one of the two available spots.
This marked the emergence of a phenomenon that only now seems to have been given a name: “Bolsonarism, in the beginning”. We referred to this back then as the “embarrassed vote.” This occurred when voters, often driven by anti-Workers’ Party sentiment, did not necessarily feel represented by Bolsonarism, but found their exhaustion and disgust with the Workers’ Party to be even stronger. It was much like holding one’s nose to swallow a foul-tasting medicine.
After more than 700,000 deaths from COVID-19, Brazilians realized that this “medicine,” much like chloroquine or ivermectin, was not what the country actually needed. In 2022, the chosen course of treatment was an old, familiar option. In an attempt to make peace with its own history and address its deep-seated pain, Brazil set aside this “alternative medicine” and opted for a treatment it already knew. Lula was elected president in an extremely tight contest between a Brazil that had relied on an ineffective “remedy” and a Brazil that placed its trust in the “People’s Pharmacy,” a public healthcare-oriented direction.
But our history has wounds that do not heal easily. And it would be inaccurate to claim that the Lula administration has successfully addressed them all. The point is that his four-year term, despite all the challenges and difficulties, provided ample opportunity for the country to make comparisons, decide on its future direction, and determine where it never wishes to return.
The memory of the disastrous Bolsonaro administration, the apparent lack of popular support, both on the streets and online, and polls suggesting tight races (although usually with an edge for Lula) led many to be surprised by the first-round results. Bolsonarism swept the polls, securing historic numbers of seats in both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, electing even more governors, and reaching the second round with enough momentum to potentially elect a second Bolsonaro, his son, Flávio.
To grasp the magnitude of this danger, one must recognize that a potential victory for Flávio Bolsonaro at this moment would pose a far greater threat than his father’s election did in 2018.
It was only possible to maintain a minimal level of institutional viability during Jair Bolsonaro’s term because Congress and the Judiciary were able to exercise a degree of autonomy. This was the only reason the COVID-19 Parliamentary Inquiry could take place, and how the Supreme Federal Court was able to address issues such as the “Fake News” inquiry or the unconstitutional decisions made by Jair Bolsonaro’s administration.
By 2027, Flávio could inherit a political landscape more favorable to his own undemocratic interests than any in history: an absolute majority in Congress and a demoralized Supreme Court, mired in various scandals. Not to mention the possibility of impeaching Supreme Court justices and appointing at least four new members to the bench. The system of checks and balances would be left completely crippled, a perfect recipe for authoritarianism and democratic erosion, steered by a political faction that has always harbored an aversion to democracy.
Brazil has a history, but it lacks memory. For 21 years, the country endured an authoritarian and repressive regime, in which all power was concentrated in a single pair of hands. Many people had to die, lose loved ones, and suffer so that democracy and the constitution could be rebuilt, a chapter of our past that should be required reading.
The saddest aspect of our current situation is that, while the military had to resort to force and violence in 1964 to stage a coup and seize power, today we are voluntarily handing that same power back to the ideological heirs of that dictatorship, through the ballot box. We have become so tolerant of authoritarianism that we are now courting potential democratic suicide.
For the sake of all those who fought to secure the civil liberties we enjoy today, we have a duty to exercise our right to choose with responsibility and respect for democracy. The vote is the instrument that leads us either toward the future or toward the abyss.
This article was originally published by Sul21. It was translated by Panamerican Dispatch. You can read the original version, in Portuguese, here.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Panamerican Dispatch.