Brazilians today have values very close to those of three decades ago.
This is what political scientist and Quaest co-founder Felipe Nunes says in “Brasil no Espelho”, a new book to be launched by Globo Livros. The work brings together the results of the Institute’s largest ever survey of ideas and beliefs, with nearly 10,000 interviews conducted in November and December 2023.
When comparing this data to long-term international series, Nunes uses a map of concepts: on the one hand the importance of religion, family and tradition; On the other hand, valuing well-being, trust and tolerance.
Brazil advanced in this second direction in the first decade of the twenty-first century, but with the crises of the past decade, it returned to giving priority to the first direction. “The very rapid changes have made people turn inward again,” he said. Bound.
In the past ten years, events such as the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, the arrest of former President Lula, the World Cup, the growth of the right and evangelicalism, the globalization of social networks, economic crises, and the Covid-19 pandemic have accumulated.
This routine has become almost synonymous with insecurity, and has prompted Brazilians to have more reserved responses, according to Nunes.
“In times of abundance, with physical and emotional security, societies tend to free themselves from traditions and allow themselves to be more self-expressive. In our case, everything we achieved until 2013, 2014, ended up being undone.”
The work also uses values as a basis for classifying Brazilians into nine identity segments, defined by a set of beliefs and interests.
Citizens are grouped according to their probability of belonging to a group. They therefore have overlapping concepts, but specific questions carry more weight than others in the definition.
Christian conservatives appear as the largest segment at 27%. It is composed mainly of evangelicals and practicing Catholics, who collectively voted for Jair Bolsonaro (PL) in the last election, and who are systematically distancing themselves from the PT.
This is the excerpt Nunes uses to contextualize Lula’s selection of Jorge Messias, an evangelical, to the Federal Supreme Court, even as the president is under pressure to nominate a black woman for the position.
The political loyalty of the Attorney General of the Federation was the dominant factor in this choice. But, as the political expert says, this is a movement that goes beyond mere calculations of positions and votes. He states that Messias is at the same time an individual construction of Lula and a “collective construction of the Evangelical Church.”
According to the study, only 3% of Brazilians belong to the far right. In interviews, members of this group defended the idea that an authoritarian regime could be better than democracy.
“If there’s one thing this book should do, it’s help us give a proper name to this thing called the far right,” Nunes says. There are 6 million Brazilians. “They are many, but compared to the total number of Brazilians, it is not much.”
The majority of Bolsonarista voters, often treated as synonymous with the far right, will belong to various groups. He claims that artificially inflating the size of this more extreme core makes public debate more polarized than it actually is.
The researcher believes that there is a large group of non-extremist conservative voters who are being neglected, which results in strategic mistakes on the part of the political class.
The Quaest founder calls the “Doria Dilemma” the fear felt by politicians of repeating the path of former São Paulo governor João Doria — who, elected in a “Bolsódória” duality in 2018, lost relevance after breaking with Bolsonaro during the pandemic.
That stigma is now more of a specter than a tangible danger, according to Nunes, with the former president imprisoned and his family’s influence no longer unanimous even within the right.
He says: “Leaving the Bolsonarianism reduces the chances of going to the second round of elections. On the other hand, staying with the Bolsonarianism almost guarantees going to the second round, but at the same time it almost guarantees its loss.”
The mistake is repeated in the field of public security. The book describes a country that demands tougher penalties in response to violence, but rejects the civilian weapons agenda. To insist on this agenda, which mainly mobilizes the far right and part of the agricultural sector, would be a mistake for the Bolsonarians.
“The country does not want to arm the population,” he says.
The work says that speeches that glorify personal merit and the idea that the state does not guarantee social mobility sound good to the ears of the average Brazilian and cut across various social groups. A link with Pablo Marsal is inevitable.
The influencer and entrepreneur, nominated for mayor of São Paulo by the PRTB in 2024, finished the first round with 28% of the vote, powered by a platform with a warlike tone, a digital empire of discounts and symbols dear to this fantasy: the defense of the patriarchal family, a life governed by God and the free market. He sold himself as the only person standing up to “the system.”
“When I was writing the book, I saw Marsal and said: What the Brazilian is telling me in the data, Marsal now understands,” Nunes says.
“Brazil in the Mirror” shows that the combination of religion as a guide, family as support, and appreciation of individual effort and fatigue with living conditions creates fertile ground for this type of political leadership to flourish.
the Bound Marsal, who was ruled ineligible by the electoral court, said he hoped a new outsider would emerge in 2026. Nunes believes this space remains open and can be filled on a national scale.