Brazil’s presidential election is scheduled for next October, and it is clear that the battle boils down to two candidates: Jair Bolsonaro and Lula da Silva. Opinion polls indicate, for the time being, that the Labor Party may return to the leadership, in an “exchange” with Bolsonaro. However, if ten years passed from now, things might be completely different or more balanced.
Let’s explain. Lula, 76, currently has 47% of intent to vote for the October 2 election, compared to 32% for the current president, according to New Datafolha query. Also, according to this institute, Jair Bolsonaro, 67, has gained points in recent weeks within the two main religious groups in Brazil, having gone from 39 to 49% among evangelicals since May, while Lula has fallen four points, from 36 to 32%. The margin will be larger in the second round (in Brazil if one of the candidates does not have an absolute majority, there will be a second round with only two votes), Lula will receive 37% of the vote and Bolsonaro 54%.
Among Catholics, Lula da Silva received the vast majority of the vote, 47%, although he has also lost one point in the past three months. Bolsonaro hunts down this group, but the truth is that the Brazilian president, like evangelicals, is up in voting intentions, from 27 to 32% since last May.
And if we look at other polls, specifically by PoderData, The difference is biggerin this case in the first round, where Bolsonaro collected 52% of the evangelicals’ preferences, compared to only 31% of his great rival in this struggle for the presidency.
In short, taking into account the polls within these religious groups, Jair Bolsonaro could be ahead of the polls if the vast majority of voters… are evangelical. But it is not. Currently, according to the last census conducted in 2010, and other surveys, 50% of voters declare themselves Catholic and only 27% say they are Evangelical.
So why would we say if this election is in ten years’ time, the ballot and the course of the election could be different? The answer is not only in the polls, but Also in studiesBy 2032, if this trend continues, the majority of Brazilians will be evangelical rather than Catholic. Which could give Jair Bolsonaro some advantages.
This is clearly an exercise in simple, hypothetical thinking, considering these recent numbers about the tendency of people who say they are evangelical and say they will vote, mostly for Jair Bolsonaro. Even because last year Polls indicate Lula will win within the same group.
With Bolsonaro currently ahead of evangelical preferences, or later, as in 2021, it is certain that the religious conversion, this transition, has not undergone oscillations. Since 2010, in Brazil, there has been a decline in Catholic affiliations at an average rate of 1.2% per year, while there has been a 0.8% increase in evangelicals, according to Consult some publications. If this trend continues, then in 2032 we will speak of 38.6% of Brazilian Catholics, with evangelicals moving “forward” at 39.8%. According to experts, this trend is due to the dynamics of this religious group among the poorer, younger, and more urban population. with women.
In other words, evangelicals continued to evolve from agrarian and rural Brazil to a more industrialized Brazil, something the Catholic Church could not achieve. Nowadays it is easy to see, for example, evangelical centers in important and densely populated neighborhoods, while Catholic churches remain more in the historical centers of the main Brazilian cities, where, as a rule, there is a smaller population, only workers.
Brazilians will already be on their way to a “religious change,” and the trend toward a declining number of Catholics is not new, it goes back a few years, as evidenced by this graph depicting the past 150 years.
Is Jair Bolsonaro an evangelist?
In case you didn’t know, one of the questions Brazilians Google the most is “What is the religion of Jair Bolsonaro? The reason is simple. Given the closeness of evangelicals to the Brazilian president, many believe that he follows the same religious ideology, but the truth is that he himself did not imagine it.” Never. And he won’t be Catholic. Hence the question for Google.
The first curriculum for evangelicals began in 2006, when bill 122which criminalized homophobia, and in 2010, in the case of gay kit. Recently, in 2016, Bolsonaro also accepted to be baptized by an evangelical priest (who, meanwhile, was arrested) in the Jordan River, in Israel, when he was still only a deputy.
Recognizing the power of evangelicals in his constituents, Bolsonaro ‘rejected’ much of his agenda in recent months for this religious group. In July, for example, the Brazilian President I set aside ten days to work with evangelical pastorsout of 25 have formal government programs.
It is not surprising that this section of Brazilian society views Jair Bolsonaro in a special way. Indeed, the leader of the Assemblies of God in Brazil, Reverend Wellington Bezerra, admitted that he wanted to get as many votes as possible for the leader of Planalto: “We are looking for votes (…) the votes will be doubled for President Jair Bolsonaro.”
