On Sunday, 105 million Brazilians voted, and President Dilma Rousseff was re-elected over former state governor Aécio Neves by a 52 to 48 percent margin. Rounding off the numbers actually exaggerates the margin, which carried to two digits was 3.28 percent. The results are available in granular detail, for every state and municipality, at the Folha de S. Paulo website. I wrote in the Examiner about the Brazilian election after the first round October 5, in which Dilma (Brazilians typically and not disrespectfully refer to politicians by their first names or nicknames) won 42 percent of the vote, well below the 47 percent she won in the first round in 2010, and Aécio won 34 percent. This second round was the closest presidential election in Brazil since the military dictatorship ended in 1985. By the way, the first candidate to be elected after that was Aécio’s grandfather, Tancredo Neves, but he died before taking office.
There were clear differences between the two candidates, many of which were brought out in this pre-election American Enterprise Institute panel on which I participate. Dilma stands for more government, Aécio for more in the way of markets. Dilma is wedded to Mercosul (the Portuguese spelling), which links Brazil to such loser economies as Argentina and Venezuela; Aécio looks to the Pacific trade pact, which includes fast-growing Chile, Peru, Colombia and Mexico. Dilma charged that Aécio would cut Brazil’s bolsa familial programs (which provide, among other things, payments to mothers who vaccinate their children and send them to school); Aécio pointed out that the bolsa familial was initiated by his PSDB party’s president Fernando Henrique Cardoso and his backers charge that extensions by the PT presidents Lula da Silva and Dilma threaten to unduly increase dependency.
Nationally the election was close, but different regions voted very differently. The four southern states (São Paulo, Paraná, Santa Caterina and Rio Grande do Sul), the most economically advanced part of the country, cast 38 percent of the nation’s votes and voted 62 to 38 percent for Aécio. The nine northeastern states (Bahia, Sergipe, Alagoas, Pernambuco, Rio Grande do Norte, Ceará, Piauí, and Maranhão), much less economically developed, cast 27 percent of the nation’s votes and voted 72 to 28 percent for Dilma. Contrary to patterns in the United States, the large cities in every part of Brazil voted more for the center-right PSDB than the countryside. São Paulo, the nation’s largest city by far, cast 6.5 million votes (New York City cast 2.5 million in 2012) and voted 64 to 36 percent for Aécio. This is not because the large majority of paulistas are rich, but it is an indication that people moving up the ladder in the market economy, people who buy appliances on the installment plan and shop at Wal-Mart (more than 500 stores in Brazil) prefer the PSDB’s policies to the PT’s.
Dilma’s victory is the fourth in a row for PT, but her percentage of the vote fell significantly, just as Barack Obama’s did in 2012. Like Obama, Dilma received fewer votes than four years before, 1.25 million in her case, and Aécio received 7.3 million more than the PSDB’s 2010 candidate, José Serra. Dilma’s percentage decline was greatest in the Distrito Federal and the state of São Paulo, which have the highest education and income levels in Brazil, and also in the state of Amazonas, 59 percent of whose votes are cast in the city of Manaus, which may be above average as well. Much was made in the Brazilian press of the fact that Dilma carried Aécio’s home state of Minas Gerais, Brazil’s second most populous, where he was governor for eight years. But her percentage there declined from 58 percent to 52 percent and she received 200,000 fewer votes than she did four years ago, while Aécio received more than 1 million more than Serra. That looks to me like a pretty good home state showing.
Brazil is the third nation this year in which more than 100 million votes were cast in a free election. In April and May, 553 million people voted in India, and in July, 133 million voted in Indonesia. That’s pretty impressive if you put it in historic perspective. India gained its independence in 1947 and spent two years in 1975-77 under rule by decree when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency. Indonesia became independent in 1949 and between 1977 and 1997 it was under Suharto’s “New Order” which limited electoral free expression. Brazil had a military dictatorship from 1965 to 1984, during much of which it had elections, but limited to candidates and parties approved by the military government. In India and Indonesia the elections this year resulted in a peaceful change of government; no one doubts that the same thing would have happened in Brazil had Dilma lost. Many readers may be disappointed in the result in Brazil. But free elections with more than 100 million people voting — that’s an awesome achievement, something to keep in mind as we are pummeled with news of unhappier developments around the world.
