Lula wants a package to recover ground in the middle class – 03/25/2023 – Bruno Boghossian

Lula has his eye on the middle class. After resuming programs aimed at the poorest population, the president set the goal of regaining ground for the PT in the next income brackets.

The petista announced in an interview last Wednesday (22) that, after the landmark 100 days in office, he will work to rescue “the purchasing power of the Brazilian middle class.” According to an aide, Lula demonstrates a fixation on this segment of the electorate. In February, he said that “the middle class is not included in almost any of the State’s public policies”.

Lula reinforced that he intends to exempt taxpayers earning up to R$5,000 from income tax (at a cost of tens of billions of reais) and to design a new housing credit program (under preliminary discussion) for those earning more than R$ 8 thousand and is out of Minha Casa, Minha Vida. Desenrola’s debt renegotiation and Petrobras’ operation to make fuel cheaper could also have an impact on these groups.

The president targets two different cores of the electorate, commonly embedded in the middle class. The politically most important bracket is that which earns from two to five minimum wages (36% of the population). The second includes Brazilians with an income of five to ten salaries (10% of the country).

In 2022, these groups preferred Jair Bolsonaro. The then-president reached the second round nine points clear of Lula among voters earning between two and five salaries, according to Datafolha. In the next track, he surpassed the petista by 15 points.

These numbers did not come out of nowhere. With no significant progress among the poorest, Bolsonaro focused attention on the middle class with measures such as cutting taxes on fuel. In the campaign, the then president gained 18 points of popularity in these groups – in the end, he was approved by 52% of voters with an income of five to ten salaries.

The background to Lula’s disquiet is a long process of increasing rejection of his party in these bands. The PT won elections in the intermediate income segments from 2002 to 2010. The political crisis of 2013 broke this connection, leading Dilma Rousseff and Aécio Neves to a tie the following year. Afterwards, the middle class gave impeachment impeachment and sat down next to Bolsonaro.

The idea is also to cushion Lula’s attacks, old and new, aimed at what he called the “middle class”. In the campaign, the PT complained that Brazil has “a middle class that boasts a standard of living that does not exist in Europe”.

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