By Rafael Rodrigues da Costa on October 29, 2021.
The economic situation in Brazil and the corruption scandals that surround President Bolsonaro are some of the reasons that he is losing evangelical support. However, Lula cannot take advantage of this situation, since he continues to be seen as a non-option for this sector of the electorate.
Evangelical support for Bolsonaro finally appears to have its days numbered. According to the latest survey by Datafolha, only 29% of evangelicals believe the government of Bolsonaro to be excellent or good. This is his lowest rating since he took office.
Since January, the approval ratings of the president have fallen rapidly no less than eleven percentage points among this segment of the religious population, which indicates that his popularity has fallen greatly in what was one of his principal electoral strongholds.
What explains the decline in Bolsonaro’s popularity among evangelicals? It is necessary to consider several factors. In the first place, the economic factor – evangelicals are one of the religious groups with high percentages of low income workers and workers in the informal economy, groups who are suffering the most from the adverse effects of the economic crisis. This includes unemployment, the impact of inflation on the price of food, housing, and transportation, along with the decrease in emergency aid.
The political factor also seems to be weighing against the president. The corruption scandals involving Bolsonaro’s family and some of his fellow evangelicals have contrasted sharply with the image of honesty portrayed in his 2018 campaign. This has caused some religious leaders – for example the Presbyterian Pastor Augusto Nicodemo and the retired theologian and You-tube figure Yago Martins – to lose their enthusiasm for the president over the course of his period in office, especially after Sergio Mora left the government in April 2020.
But not Lula either…
Even with the obvious drop in the polls for Bolsonaro, ex-Pesident Lula, from the Partido de los Trabajadores, (PT.) does not seem to be able to take advantage of this situation among the evangelicals, since he is tied with Bolsonaro, at least since May of this year. In the latest Datafolha poll, Bolsonaro shows up with a 38% of evangelicals who intend to vote for him in the first round, while the preference for Lula among the same group is 37%. In the second round, Lula has 44% of evangelicals who prefer to vote for him, compared with 43% for Bolsonaro. Considering the margin of error for the survey, about 3 percentage points, the two are effectively tied.
Here is where it gets complicated for the Partido de los Trabajadores candidate. It is necessary to remember that, at least since 2014, evangelicals have included the anti-PT belief system as part of their religious discourse, labeling the followers of the Partido de losTrabajadores and the “left” as enemies of the people of God, and as sort of a synthesis of all the social problems of the nation. And here everything becomes mixed together: the accusations of corruption in the vote-buying scandal of 2005, all the way to the Operation Car Wash money laundering investigations of 2014, passing through conspiracy theories about “cultural Marxism” and “gender ideology.” Finally, all this theological bombardment was used, and has been lavishly utilized, by the evangelical leaders to block any understanding or agreement between the evangelical public and the agendas of the left, limiting the ability of the PT to engage with this segment of the population.
In addition, we should point out that Lula’s stagnant numbers among the evangelicals is also a result of a certain resistance – not to say arrogance and lack of sensitivity – among some progressive sectors when engaging in dialogue with the religious public. Based on the argument of a secular state, there are those who believe that the separation between religion and politics can be carried out with the same chemical purity as the separation of oil and water.
And here we have the great mistake of a good part of the Brazilian left – in trying to isolate the religious point of view concerning politics, what they are achieving in practice is underestimating a very significant aspect of the daily life of these voters. After all, we should not forget that the evangelical church in Brazil has grown primarily on the margins of the big cities because this is a strategic site for drawing together the poorest people in the population. This is due to the fact that the church is not only a place of worship; it also extends a network of mutual support among the brothers and sisters of the church, offering help in times of need, as well as being an important space in the community for leisure activities, culture and sociability.
If the left lacks the sensitivity and sense to engage in dialogue with this portion of the electorate, there is no lack of right-wing efforts to keep this group united on their side. Proof of this is the force with which the thesis of the “spiritual war” continues to show great influence in religious circles, as if the government of Bolsonaro were some kind of sole defender of Christianity, while his critics and opponents actually would be sent (or deceived) by the forces of evil to destroy the pillars of Judeo-Christian civilization. Although this theory is losing adherents, if the progressive forces fail to dispute the religious narrative about who the real enemies of God and the people are, it is likely that in 2022 we will have a “ third path” that is more evangelical and anti-leftist.
Rafael Rodrigues da Costa is a sociologist with an MA in Social Science from the Universidade Federal de São Paulo, and a visiting scholar at the Universidad Federal de Bahía (UFBA).
Source: El Diplo, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English