Turbo-charged Brazil aid benefits more states where Bolsonaro seeks votes

President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) managed, with the support of Congress and circumventing spending control rules, to include 5.7 million new families in Auxílio Brasil since November 2021. The expansion mainly benefited states where the president was defeated by Fernando Haddad. (EN) in 2018 and is now trying to improve his image with an eye on reelection.

In 14 units of the federation, the increase in the number of beneficiaries of the program was higher than the average expansion in the country when considering the total population of each state.

The list includes the nine from the Northeast region, in addition to Pará, Amapá, Acre, Amazonas and Rio de Janeiro. Bolsonaro lost to Haddad in ten of those states in 2018 – the entire Northeast and Pará.

With Auxílio Brasil, the government increased the number of families served by the income transfer policy from 14.5 million to 20.2 million. This expansion of 5.7 million beneficiaries represents 2.7% of the population of Brazil, estimated by the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics).

However, this rate was higher, for example, in Piauí, Pernambuco and Sergipe, where it reached 4.6% of the state population. In Amapá, the index was 4.5%.

Maranhão and Alagoas, which have high rates of poverty, had an increase in beneficiaries representing 3.2% of the population. In Bahia, the most populous state in the Northeast, the rate was 4.2%.

Bolsonarist states such as Roraima and Rondônia, despite being among the poorest in the country, did not register a significant increase in the number of families served by the new program. The magnification rate was 1.9% and 1.8%, respectively.

According to the Map of Poverty, prepared by FGV Social, these states presented, in 2021, a level of misery above the country’s average.

Tocantins was the only place where Bolsonaro was defeated in the last election and was among the least benefited from the expansion of Auxílio Brasil since the program was launched in November last year.

The Planalto Palace and the core of Bolsonaro’s re-election campaign aimed to boost the cash transfer program to boost the president’s popularity among low-income voters, especially in the Northeast.

Although Auxílio Brasil has reached a record in the number of families (20.2 million), coverage is still far from the performance of emergency aid, which was created in April 2020 to serve the most vulnerable population with the arrival of the coronavirus in Brazil. country.

The benefit reached almost 40 million households. With that, the government made a strong expansion of social spending, and Bolsonaro saw his popularity rise – from the fourth month of payment.

To mitigate the negative impact of the end of the aid on the president’s popularity, the government bet on Auxílio Brasil and for that sponsored two PEC (proposed amendments to the Constitution) to escape budgetary limitations and increase funding for the program.

With this, in addition to increasing the number of beneficiaries, it was possible to increase the average value of the social benefit from approximately R$ 230 to R$ 607 per month.

Technicians from the Ministry of Citizenship, responsible for managing the income transfer program, claim that the system for including families in Auxílio Brasil works in an automated manner and does not make any distinction or preference by region.

In addition, they emphasize, the resources allocated to the program this year were enough to eliminate the waiting list, that is, all the people who had requested the benefit and whose documentation had already been approved by the ministry were attended to.

In the evaluation of the director of FGV Social, Marcelo Neri, the difference in the average expansion of Auxílio Brasil between the states can be explained by issues of operationalization of the program. Rondônia and Roraima, for example, have more remote areas with difficult access.

He also cites the reduction of funds to operate the social assistance network, which includes centers for serving the population.

“The strategy of using the digital medium as a way of accessing a program to fight poverty is risky. But it is also a challenge to do it in an analogue way. There is no simple solution”, said Neri.

By boosting Auxílio Brasil, Planalto hopes to improve Bolsonaro’s electoral performance in the region where former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) has the most political strength.

The PT has 56% of voting intentions in the first round among people who receive Auxílio Brasil or live with someone who is a beneficiary of the program, according to a Datafolha survey. Bolsonaro has 28% among these voters.

At the end of May, the president had 20%, against 59% of votes for Lula.

Bolsonaro, therefore, has managed to advance in popularity in this segment, but he is still far from the level reached by the PT.

The Bolsonarista campaign believes that the electoral effect of the expansion of Auxílio Brasil, which rose to R$600 in August, should only become more evident in September – with a peak expected for the period between the first and second rounds.

“At the moment, we still haven’t been able to notice an effect of this on the public that receives the Aid [Brasil]. Inflation has greatly eroded people’s ability to access goods. The deflation of the last few weeks has mainly hit fuels; food remains at a high level,” said Leonardo Paz Neves, an analyst at FGV’s International Prospecting and Intelligence Nucleus.

According to the Auxílio Brasil calendar, the first installment of the benefit, increased to R$ 600, will be released from August 9 to 22. That is, not all families received the new value until the most recent Datafolha survey.

In addition to increasing the value of the income transfer, Bolsonaro extinguished the name Bolsa Família – associated with PT governments. The strategy was to create a brand for the president in the social area.

In the first year of government, Bolsonaro did not give priority to Bolsa Família, which had a waiting list of almost 1.5 million families.

The president’s re-election campaign has no hope of being able to reverse Lula’s favoritism scenario in the region, but it hopes to improve Bolsonaro’s performance in these states.