President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s PT remains at the forefront as Brazilians’ favorite acronym, now accompanied by PL, a legend reinforced in national memory by former President Jair Bolsonaro, shows a new study by Datafolha.
The left party remains the one most remembered, a feat it has maintained since the late 1990s. It is currently cited by 24% of Brazilians, compared to 12% for PL, the second favorite acronym of Brazilians.
The scenario is that of stability for the PT in the third Lula government, whose rates varied between 23% and 27%. Bolsonaro’s party has reached a record pace in the historic run that began in 1989.
The data comes from a question that received spontaneous and unique responses to Datafolha, asked to 2,002 people aged 16 or over between December 2 and 4, in 113 municipalities. The margin of error is plus or minus 2 percentage points.
Looking at data since December 2021, when PL began to be consistently cited in search, the peak of PT occurred in September 2022, when the acronym was memorized by 31% of Brazilians.
At the time, Jair Bolsonaro governed the country, directly opposing the PT. Currently ineligible and imprisoned, Bolsonaro has already declared that he wants to resume the conflict with Lula personally or through one of his sons, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro (PL-RJ).
Considering the entire historical series of Datafolha, with data on this issue since 1989 (the year of the first direct presidential elections after the military dictatorship), the PT only lost the best-known acronym to the benefit of the PMDB. The legend, which before 1980 bore the name MDB, recovered in 2017, accounted for 19% of mentions in 1992 and 1993. Today, it accounts for 2%.
The situation changed in the late 1990s, when the PT took the lead and never left the lead.
However, since the start of the historic series, the highest rate among Brazilians has been those who say they have no party preference. The option has never had a rate lower than 40%.
The PSDB, which was once considered one of the main opponents of the PT, began the historic run in 1989 with 1% and peaked at 9% in June 2015, a period of protests against the government of Dilma Rousseff (PT) that led to the impeachment of the then president.
This period, from February 2015 to December 2016, is also one of the worst for the PT since its rise at the end of the 1990s. In March 2015 and December 2016, the acronym, accustomed to double digits, reached 9%.
The PSDB and PMDB/MDB battled for second place in party preference for most of the first two decades of the 2000s, until the PSL began overtaking the parties in October 2018.
This era was preceded by the stabbing, on September 6 of the same year, of Jair Bolsonaro during the presidential campaign. The politician came from the PSL, which had reached a peak of 7% in October 2018, then fell.
The PL began to be remembered consistently from December 2021, being mentioned by at least 1% of Brazilians. Bolsonaro attended the party on November 30 of the same year.
The party has since been rising in the polls, reaching a two-chamber percentage in October 2022, when Bolsonaro ran in the runoff with Lula, to whom he lost.
Although he draws attention to the party he is in, Bolsonaro also rejects his name and that of his family, as shown by Datafolha.
In the segment analysis, the latest survey of partisan preferences shows that the PT has higher mention rates among those with primary education (31%), residents of the Northeast (31%), Catholics (30%), those who rate the STF as excellent or good (48%), and those who voted for Lula in 2022 (50%).
In turn, the PL stands out among those with monthly family income between 5 and 10 SMIC (19%), with secondary and higher education (14% each), who judge the STF as bad or terrible (30%) and voted for Bolsonaro in 2022 (29%).
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