Analysis: Datafolha shows Bolsonaro’s difficulty in opposing Aid Brasil to Lula’s Bolsa Família

The Datafolha survey showed how complex it is to create a social brand and reap political dividends from it.

So far, President Jair Bolsonaro’s (PL) attempt to bill the Auxílio Brasil electorally has proved to be a fiasco.

In the group of those who receive the R$ 400 benefit, Bolsonaro has a worse evaluation than the Brazilian population as a whole, the survey shows. Only 19% consider their government excellent or good in this segment, against 25% of the total.

Likewise, 62% of those who have this social policy say they would never vote for the current president, seven percentage points above the general level.

The electoral logic, therefore, is inverted, and at first glance it is difficult to find a plausible explanation for this paradox. To decipher it, the first thing to do is look at the numbers of his main opponent in the October election, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT).

The former president’s numbers almost perfectly mirror those of Bolsonaro in this regard.

Lula has up to 59% of voting intentions among those who receive the aid, a level considerably higher than the general population data of 43%. The PT is rejected in this segment by 25%, against 37% of the total of Brazilians.

A clear conclusion is that the population still does not see Auxílio Brasil as a fundamentally different policy from its predecessor, Bolsa Família, created by PT governments. The electoral profit continues to fall on Lula.

Although it is striving to improve digital communication, the PT still eats the dust of bolsonaristas in this area.

On the other hand, in the more traditional communication strategy, that of creating brands that are easily identifiable by the population, Bolsonaro has sinned, and is suffering the consequences of this negligence.

It is almost impossible to call a Bolsonaro government program by name. On the other hand, PT members had, in addition to Bolsa Família, Minha Casa Minha Vida, Prouni and PAC (Program for Accelerated Growth), to name just a few.

Twelve years after Lula’s departure from power, and six years after Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment, most of these actions continue to be the PT’s electoral flagship.

Bolsonaro’s difficulty in capitalizing on his main social program is intensified in the Northeast, a region of the country where, in percentage terms, there are more beneficiaries of Auxílio Brasil, and which remains a lulista stronghold. 37% of people from the Northeast are covered by the program, against 14% in the South and 17% in the Southeast, according to Datafolha.

Bolsonaro’s allies say they are under no illusion that the benefit will be able to reverse the pro-Lula advantage in the Northeast, at least in the current electoral cycle. But they would like to at least slim down the PT’s lead a little, something that so far has not happened.

Finally, there is another factor to consider, which dialogues with future expectations about the program. Among Lula’s voters, 73% say that the aid is not enough and should be greater. For Bolsonaristas, this level drops to 54%.

It is reasonable to assume that this segment believes that, with the PT in the Presidency, the value could increase, perhaps to the R$ 600 that he publicly defended during the pandemic.

Bolsonaro, on the other hand, reaps the effects of years of downplaying the need for social policies and a discourse that characterizes those receiving government benefits as lazy, or worse. His credibility in this area is low, and Lula’s, very high.

It is possible that in the coming months, Auxílio Brasil will become more associated by the population as an action of the current government, giving some political reward to Bolsonaro in terms of points in the polls.

But the poor start of the program, at least as an electoral asset, shows that it is not easy to simply erase Bolsa Família and its main sponsor from the map.