An election year is always full of predictions, just like 2026 which is about to begin. Predictions almost always contradicted by facts, executioners of the reputation of the soothsayers.
Some of these denials have accompanied presidential elections since the start of the new democratic era.
Who would have predicted, in January 1989, that in December the final battle would take place between two newcomers among around twenty candidates experienced both in the dictatorship and in the trenches of opposition to the regime?
Fernando Collor (PRN) defeated Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT), leaving behind the likes of Ulysses Guimarães (PMDB), Mário Covas (PSDB), Paulo Maluf (PDS), Leonel Brizola (PDT) and 16 other competitors.
Five years and one indictment later, in 1994, the Minister of Finance was elected who, at the beginning of that year, doubted his ability to be elected federal deputy. Fernando Henrique Cardoso (PSDB) started the campaign with low voting intentions in the polls and beat Lula in the first round.
FHC would repeat the feat in 1998, but would not succeed. 2002 began with betting on Roseana Sarney (PFL), whose candidacy collapsed with the exposure of photos of money seized from her husband’s office.
José Serra (PSDB) would then be the favorite, but the PT deputy reversed the trend under the auspices of the Letter to the Brazilian People and the new version of “Lulinha Paz e Amor”, works by Antonio Palocci and Duda Mendonça.
In the political turmoil of Mensalão, Lula’s re-election seemed impossible, but he not only succeeded (2006), but also elected (2010) and re-elected Dilma Rousseff (PT). Nothing in 2014 indicated that it would be prevented from doing so in 2016.
And the turn to the right in 2018, led by a deputy from the lower clergy? At the start of the year, Jair Bolsonaro (PSL) was a joke, the center was still betting on Aécio Neves (PSDB) and no one dreamed that Lula would be arrested and return to power in 2022.
As you can see, predictions in politics are perishable products.
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