Flávio Bolsonaro tops Brazil first-round vote as family wins Congress seats

Liberal Party doubles Senate seats, becomes largest bloc in nearly four decades

Senator Flávio Bolsonaro of Rio de Janeiro, 45, finished first in Brazil’s October 4 first-round presidential election ahead of incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, The Wall Street Journal reported. The two will meet in an October 25 runoff.

While Flávio’s first-place finish placed him at the front of Brazil’s conservative movement, the broader Bolsonaro family expanded its footprint across the national legislature. Michelle Bolsonaro, Jair’s wife, was elected senator for Brasília with a record number of votes. Jair’s brother Renato won a congressional seat in São Paulo, while his son Carlos won a Senate seat in the southern state of Santa Catarina. Jair Renan Bolsonaro, Jair’s 28-year-old youngest son, won a seat in the lower house for Santa Catarina.

The Liberal Party (PL), the party that anchors the Bolsonaro movement, nearly doubled its Senate caucus to 28 of 81 seats, making it the largest single-party Senate bloc in nearly four decades. The party also cemented its position as the biggest party in the lower house of Congress.

At the state level, right-wing or centrist candidates won outright or finished first in roughly 20 of Brazil’s 26 states and the Federal District, according to the WSJ.

The Bolsonaros’ success reflects a rightward shift in Brazilian politics that has been building for more than a decade. Evangelical Christians make up more than a quarter of Brazilians, up from 9% in 1991, while violent crime has fueled demands for tougher policing and expanded gun access. Brazil’s agribusiness sector, fueled by Chinese demand for soybeans and beef, has given economic and political weight to the country’s conservative farming heartland. Meanwhile, economic and political crises under leftist governments elsewhere in Latin America, particularly Venezuela, have helped the right cast the left as a threat, the WSJ reported.

For decades after Brazil’s military dictatorship ended in 1985, openly identifying with the political right carried a stigma, the WSJ reported. That began to shift as a generation of voters came of age with no memory of military rule, and as corruption scandals and economic turmoil under da Silva’s Workers’ Party defined their formative political experiences.

Jair Bolsonaro gave that shift a voice, making it possible, even fashionable, for millions of Brazilians to openly embrace the right, according to the WSJ.

“Today’s Brazil is a right-of-center country,” Brian Winter, editor in chief of Americas Quarterly and a longtime Latin America analyst, told the WSJ. “The Brazil of bossa nova and samba, the Brazil that so many foreigners know and that Lula grew up with, has now been almost totally replaced,” Winter said. What has emerged instead, he said, is a Brazil of “cowboy hats and big belt buckles, megachurches, malls” — “A country that has so much in common now with the United States.”

The elder Bolsonaro, who lost his 2022 reelection bid by fewer than 2 percentage points and was convicted last year of plotting a coup, remains under house arrest serving a 27-year sentence. Despite his legal status, the movement he built has continued to expand.

Brazilian political scientists said in The Wall Street Journal that Bolsonaro “is no longer just a man, but an idea — and one that resonates with Brazilians today more than any other.”

Yet Flávio himself is polarizing, with more than 40% of Brazilians saying in recent polls they would never vote for him, and even some right-wing voters describing him as far from an ideal candidate. He is more politically savvy and connected than his father, but also more entangled in the corruption allegations endemic to Brazilian politics, the WSJ reported.

The Bolsonaro name has functioned as what Brasília-based political scientist Leonardo Barreto called a “cognitive shortcut” — an immediate signal of conservative values for much of the right. “There is a perception that someone with the Bolsonaro surname will not betray the objective or the ideas behind the movement,” Barreto said. “You are loyal to the leader. You are loyal to the family because you believe it possesses some special quality.”

If elected, Flávio’s administration could reshape Brazil’s Supreme Court. As many as four of the court’s 11 justices could become vacant during a presidential term, subject to Senate approval, and the right’s growing strength there could give Bolsonaro allies more leverage to pursue impeachment of judges they view as hostile to the family.

Getting Jair Bolsonaro back into politics — or at least out of house arrest — would be more difficult. Flávio could seek to pardon his father as president, or Congress could pursue an amnesty, but either route could be challenged and struck down by the Supreme Court.