Summary of Brazil’s likely next president, explained

00:00:00 - 00:05:00

In the upcoming Brazilian presidential election, Jair Bolsonaro, the current president and a far-right leader, is up against Luiz Inácio da Silva, a former president and left-wing politician who is also known as Lula. Lula's left-wing politics are rooted in his days as a factory worker and union leader, and he has a strong base of support among the working class, low-income people, left-leaning Catholic voters, Afro-Brazilians, and Indigenous people. Bolsonaro has been trying to court these groups with social reform programs, but Lula's strategy seems to be working better.

• 00:00:00 The video discusses Brazil's upcoming presidential election, in which current president and far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro is pitted against former president and left-wing politician Luiz Inácio da Silva, also known as Lula. Lula is Brazil's most famous and popular politician, and his left wing politics are rooted in his days as a factory worker and a union leader. During Brazil's military dictatorship, Lula led massive strikes and protests. By the 1980s, he had helped organize thousands of trade union supporters into a political party, the Workers Party, or the PT. Lula's coalition drew mainly from Brazil's political left, which included the working class, low income people, left-leaning Catholic voters, Afro-Brazilians and Indigenous people. This is a pretty unique arrangement of forces, which allowed the Worker's Party to grow and become so strong. In 1989, Lula ran as his party's candidate for president and made it to the second round, losing by only 4 million votes. Then he lost again in 1994 and again in 1998. However, his base was growing, and in 2002, when Lula ran for president for the fourth time, he tried something a little bit different. In the 2002 race, Lula
• 00:05:00 Dilma Rousseff, who inherited her predecessor's coalition, easily won the presidency in 2010. However, her approach to managing the economy and accusations of corruption cost her support, and in 2014, something happened that led to the entire coalition's collapse. In 2018, Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right candidate, won the presidency with the support of the center-right and even some leftist voters, signaling a new political moment in the country. Lula, Rousseff's former coalition's split between several candidates, and Bolsonaro's implementation of social reform programs to court low-income and working class Brazilians helped him remain popular, but as the 2022 election approached, Lula's strategy seemed to be working more than Bolsonaro's. The polls were spot-on in regards to Lula, but they were dead wrong about Bolsonaro, and Bolsonaro won the first round but Lula still won the election.