Attacks on Israel and rising prices lowered Lula’s popularity

An opinion poll released this Wednesday (6) proved that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s statement equating Israel’s war against Hamas terrorism with Nazism in the Second World War dropped his popularity in February, even among Lulistas. The biggest drop was in the evangelical segment, which represents around a third of the population. In it, the negative assessment of the Lula government increased from 36% to 48%.

The quantitative research was carried out by the consultancy Genial/Quaest between the 25th and 27th of February with two thousand people. With this sample and methodology, the consultancies claim to achieve a reliability level of 95%.

With technical evidence, it shows signs that were already noticeable: Lula’s speech about the Holocaust brought shame to Brazilian diplomacy, strengthened the pro-Bolsonaro act on February 25th and undermined Lula’s attempts to get closer to parliamentarians from the evangelical bench. . Evangelicals have a great affinity with Israel due to ties of Christian and Jewish customs and beliefs and the fact that the country is home to sacred sites for both religions, among other factors.

Furthermore, the reference to the Holocaust generated gratitude from Hamas terrorists and increased reports of anti-Semitism in Brazil by more than 230%, according to the Israeli Federation of São Paulo.

According to the Quaest survey, 60% of those interviewed said that Lula exaggerated his statement about the Holocaust. Among Lula’s supporters the rate was 43%. Respondents could only choose exaggerated, not exaggerated or not responding or having no opinion.

“The research shows a very unfavorable picture for the Lula government”, assesses political scientist Adriano Cerqueira, professor at Ibmec and the Federal University of Ouro Preto (UFOP). “Lula is becoming radicalized, moving away from the political center and taking on an extreme left tone. This was quite evident in the survey results. So this result was very bad for Lula and if he wants to improve his performance, he will have to improve your political communication”, points out the expert.

According to analysts interviewed by People’s Gazette, the research result was influenced by Lula’s strategy of adopting more radical speeches. The indices show that the president had the worst evaluation among evangelicals and the richest population in the country.

“President Lula, for the most part, would say that 95% of the time, he continues speaking to his electorate. That issue addressed during the campaign, of pacification between different audiences, did not happen. He continues speaking to those voters who elected him, so the other part of the population still does not feel represented”, analyzes political scientist Deysi Cioccari.

“A very important fact is the consistent loss of Lula and his government of the evangelical electorate. The Catholic population in Brazil is shrinking and the evangelical population is growing. And, among evangelicals, the majority have a negative assessment of Lula and his government”, says Adriano Cerqueira. Among evangelicals, President Lula’s work reached 62% disapproval and only 35% approval. There is a 27 percentage point difference.

The result was driven by the various criticisms that the PT member made towards Israel in recent months. On the last day of the survey, Lula said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu committed genocide and wants to exterminate the Palestinian people.

“The biggest disaster of Lula’s speech, this undue comparison about Israel, wasn’t even in foreign policy, since Brazil doesn’t have as much presence in discussions abroad as Lula would like it to have, but it was in domestic politics. I evaluate that Lula literally shot himself in the foot by insistently making accusations against Israel”, says the expert who is a professor at Ibmec and UFOP.

While the government celebrates GDP, consumers feel the economic problems in their pockets

The survey also assessed respondents’ perception of the economy and once again showed the population’s dissatisfaction, even among Lula’s voters. According to the survey, 38% say that the economy in Brazil has gone haywire in the last twelve months; 34% say it stayed the same and only 26% thought it improved.

“This is the first time that the positive assessment of the economy among Lula voters has dropped. Lulistas who thought the economy had improved went from 55% to 46%, while Lulistas who thought the economy had gotten worse went from 11% to 15%.” , assessed the director of the Quaest institute and specialist in opinion research, Felipe Nunes, on his account on X (formerly Twitter).

In recent weeks, the government celebrated the result obtained by Brazil’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which reached US$2.17 trillion. With the result, Brazil returned to the ranking of the 10 largest economies in the world. Despite the result, the consumer’s impression is different.

Even though the GDP result was positive, inflation weighed on consumers’ pockets, mainly due to the increase in the value of food products. According to the Broad National Consumer Price Index (IPCA), inflation in January was 0.42%. In 2023, inflation was around 4.7%.

In January, the increase in the food and beverage group, which has the greatest weight in the family consumption basket (21.12%), increased by 1.38%. This means a weight of 0.29 percentage points in the month’s IPCA. Furthermore, the increase indicated by the index in this category was the highest ever recorded for the month of January since 2016, when the group reached an increase of 2.28%.

These were the numbers presented by the government to try to convince the population that the economy is not doing badly. But the survey showed that this is not the perception of the people. According to the survey, 63% of people think that their bills have gone up, 73% realize that food prices have increased and 51% have no doubt that fuel is more expensive. The percentage of people who think prices are falling and inflation is under control has been falling since June 2023.

Disengagement of young people and female voters

The survey also showed disapproval of the government among young people. According to the survey, there was a drop in approval in the age group between 16 and 34 years old. In February 2023, 57% of young people in this age group approved of Lula’s work. In February this year, the percentage fell to 46%.

Experts explain that the fact that Lula does not achieve good engagement on social media, like his predecessor, former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL), hinders his performance with young people. “Today, Lula is supported mainly by the public that follows the news on television, which is the older public, as we have seen. However, the majority of the electorate tends to follow more information through social networks and, in this environment, Lula loses ugly, because negative perceptions prevail”, he analyzes.

The female profile also showed greater disbelief with the last year of the Lula government. Among them, only 51% of those interviewed said they approved of the work carried out by the PT member. According to the latest Quaest indices, the positive evaluation of women has been falling since August, when 60% approved of the government.

Despite having been the target of Lula’s electoral campaign, women have not been favored in the composition of the PT government. After the formation of their ministries, the lack of representation was one of the major complaints of the electorate formed by them.

With 37 portfolios, only 11 were headed by women at the beginning of this third term. The number no longer represented the parity between genders that the PT member preached throughout his campaign. After eight months of government, two lost their positions and were replaced by the opposite sex.

Lula’s recent appointment of Flávio Dino to fill Rosa Weber’s seat on the Federal Supreme Court (STF) may also have generated dissatisfaction. With 11 ministers on the Court, only two were women and, with Weber’s retirement, the expectation was that Lula would nominate another to replace her to maintain a minimum of representation on the Supreme Court, but this did not happen.

As they lose space in Lula’s government, he is also declining in terms of female approval. “Lula said a lot that Bolsonaro didn’t pay attention to minorities and in his government that didn’t end up working. What ended up prevailing was this “anti-communication”, in which the speeches didn’t match the actions”, assesses Cioccari.

How should Lula deal with indexes?

The survey showed that the president only has a prevalence of approval among the profile of citizens who voted for him in 2022, mostly represented by residents of the Northeast region and who receive up to two minimum wages.

For PhD in Political Sciences Deysi Cioccari, although there may be changes in some strategies, Lula’s speeches should not lose focus on his traditional electorate. “The president seems more irreducible to me in this mandate. Maybe there will be a readjustment in general communication, but I don’t believe in the speeches”, points out the expert.

In an example of the analysis carried out by the expert, hours after the research was released, Lula received the Prime Minister of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, in Brasília for a series of meetings. In a press conference after the agenda alongside the Spaniard, Lula once again made nods to the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.

Research points to a continued drop in the president’s popularity since August

The survey showed that 51% of those interviewed approved the PT government and 46% disapproved. The result, however, indicates a drop in the president’s popularity in relation to the survey carried out by the same consultancy carried out in December 2023. In the survey carried out in August 2023, 60% of those interviewed said they approved of the work carried out by Lula and 35% disapproved.

“The research shows, since August, a continuous increase in the worsening of the evaluation and simultaneously a drop in the positive evaluation”, says Cerqueira.

“What is still sustaining the percentage of positive evaluation of Lula and his government’s work are two well-segmented groups: those aged 60 or over in whom a more positive evaluation prevails; and those who have a lower income and with a lowest level of education, up to elementary school. In other segments, negative evaluation prevails”, points out the Ibmec professor.

Research methodology

The survey was carried out by the Genial and Quaest institutes and interviewed, in person, two thousand people, between February 25th and 27th, 2024. The interviews were carried out in 120 cities in all regions of the country. The margin of error is 2.2 percentage points and the reliability level is 95%.