Datafolha: Brazilians are sad and fear violence more – 09/15/2023 – Power

Brazilians are experiencing a period of prevalent negative feelings towards Brazil. According to new research from Datafolha, the majority of respondents say they are sad, discouraged, insecure, afraid and hopeless. And violence has skyrocketed, in relation to the end of 2022, as the main concern alongside health.

Only 1 of the 6 items questioned to 2,016 people on Tuesday (12) and Wednesday (13) recorded a response in which the positive bias outweighed the negative. 50% of respondents said they were calmer about the Brazilian situation, while 45% said they felt angry.

The survey’s margin of error is two percentage points, plus or minus. In comparisons with previous rounds involving the same questions, Brazilians are less negative than a week before the election that brought Jair Bolsonaro (PL) to power in 2018, during the turbulent government of Michel Temer (MDB).

But the current data does not serve to fuel speeches by the militants who support Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who has always pointed to Bolsonaro, whom the PT member defeated in 2022, as a focus of aggression and negative feelings.

Compared to the last survey carried out during the Bolsonaro administration, in May 2020, under the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, Brazilians’ feelings at most fluctuated within the margin of error — and, in the case of the anger/tranquility binomial, with a worse scenario in terms of feelings.

52% of Brazilians said they were calm, a number that in 2018 was 27%. 42% already declared anger, compared to 68% on the eve of the election in which Bolsonaro embodied the figure of an anti-political “outsider” amid the scorched earth of Operation Lava Jato, Temer’s political difficulties and the years of recession under Dilma Rousseff (PT) .

Worse for Lula now, Brazilian sentiment does not follow his slogans. Take the retread campaign motto from 1989 (“Without fear of being happy”): today, 36% say they are happy, while 61% say they are sad about the country. In 2018, the proportion was worse, 18% and 79%, respectively, but the numbers are similar to those in 2020, 34% and 63%.

The same goes for themes around hope and fear, which date back to Lula’s victorious 2022 campaign (“Hope will overcome fear”). 55% of respondents say they have more fear than hope, a jump compared to 46% in 2020, although lower than the 59% in 2018. 44% already declare the opposite (it was 40% in 2020 and 53% in 2022).

In the same vein, 61% say they are afraid of the future, more than the 57% in the previous round, equal to the level of 2018 (62%). Those who say they have confidence in the future when thinking about Brazil are now 38%, a negative fluctuation within the margin compared to 41% in 2020, and positive compared to 36% in 2018.

In the current survey, the same numbers are found among those who say they are discouraged (61%) and excited (38%), in a technical tie with 2018 (59% and 39%, respectively), but less negative than in 2018 (78% and 21%).

The issue of greatest dissatisfaction is security in relation to the country. 71% of those interviewed by Datafolha say they are insecure today, the same level as in 2020 (69%). It was 88% five years ago. 29% already declare security, compared to 30% three years ago and 11% in 2018.

This figure goes hand in hand with the 17% of spontaneous mentions made to violence as Brazil’s biggest problem. The index was 6% in December 2022, the most recent survey with this question.

As a result, the item ties with public health at the top of the ranking of Brazilian problems highlighted by interviewees. In the previous round, health had 21%.

It is only the third time since 2011, when Datafolha started asking these questions, that security and health top the list. The others were in September 2018 (23% for health, 20% for education) and July 2019 (19% violence, 18% health).

Now, concerns remain education (11%), unemployment (9%), economy (8%), corruption (6%) and poverty (6%) — this last point, the central focus of Lula’s campaign speech and actions with the return of an increased Bolsa Família, it fell six points compared to December as a concern.

At this point in Bolsonaro’s mandate, in 2019, health also topped the list, with 18%, followed by education (15%), unemployment (15%), violence (11%), corruption (9%) and economy (8 %).

These data, of course, reflect the spirit of the time and objective questions. Concern about public health rose to 30% after the outbreak of the pandemic, in the December 2020 survey, for example. And corruption led the concerns in the years of news filled with revelations about Operation Lava Jato: it accounted for 37% of mentions in March 2016, a month before Dilma was removed from office to undergo the impeachment process.