Ciro Gomes: right-wing, anti-PT (Workers' Party) rhetoric takes Bolsonaro's supporters into the second round.

Monday hangover: end of the first round of the presidential elections. The result for current president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) revealed significant errors in the polls that had predicted a victory for former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT). 

The question that everyone is asking is: what gave rise to this far-right movement in Brazil? The debates were a barometer, still polarized between Lula and Bolsonaro, but marked by bravado, slogans, and a horror show. 

On one side, Soraya Tronicke (UNIÃO) and Simone Tebet (MDB) represented the female voice with a clear intention: to garner votes from the female public by employing an offensive narrative against Bolsonaro. This was especially considering the president's current unpopularity among women, in the majority of cases. 

The third option: Ciro Gomes (PDT) ended up acting as a kind of campaign manager for Bolsonaro, strongly criticizing Lula and the PT throughout the electoral process. In a milder tone, the infamous corruption so often cited by Ciro took on new colors and nuances. 

Real estate, corruption scandals, vaccines, deaths—the various accusations received by the Bolsonaro family—the PDT (Democratic Labour Party) member simply focused on strategy, choosing a side: Bolsonaro's. 

Attracting right-wing and center-right parties was a narrative mechanism used, especially in the debate. The plan literally backfired: Ciro lost his way and began to flirt with a, in quotes, "measured" form of Bolsonarism.

At the end of the results this past Sunday (02), Ciro obtained 3% in voting intentions, falling one position, occupied by Tebet who finished with a percentage of 4,2%. 

With a projection of garnering votes from the extremes, Bolsonarism emerged. Given the final numbers, Lula fell 2 points short of a presidential election, while Bolsonaro remained at just over 44%. 

SUMMARY OF THE WORK! 

Ciro's electorate migrated to Bolsonaro. In this game of push and pull, the well-intentioned democrat was eroded by a lack of ideas and, consequently, a desperate need to promote a niche far removed from democracy, freedom, respect, and dignity. Democracy lost in the first round, and Ciro Gomes played a large part in that process.