BRAZILIANS find local elections dull. But the first round of voting in this year’s contests, on October 2nd, was anything but. It showed, first of all, just how fed up voters are with conventional politicians. Even though voting is obligatory, nearly a fifth of the electorate did not show up, a record high for a local poll.
The second lesson is that the Workers’ Party (PT) of Dilma Rousseff, who was ousted from the presidency by congress in August, will struggle to regain anything like its former influence. It lost nearly two-thirds of the mayoral races that it had won in 2012, including in São Paulo, the biggest city (see chart). Though its rivals are hardly beloved by voters, that will make it harder for the PT to put up a fight in the next presidential election, in 2018.
In many places the sum of no-shows plus blank and spoilt ballots outstripped votes for the winner. In Belo Horizonte, Brazil’s fourth-largest city, a former chairman of a local football club will face the team’s former goalkeeper in a run-off on October 30th.
The anti-political mood owes much to recession and to the Petrobras scandal, which almost weekly exposes a...Continue reading
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