As observed in 2018, the Brazilian municipalities with the highest amounts of votes for Jair Bolsonaro (Liberal Party) in 2022 were also the ones that recorded the highest rate of deaths due to COVID-19, whose worst period of infection was between August 2020 and April 2021. That's what a study by the State University of Campinas (Unicamp, in Portuguese) has recently found.
Previous studies have already indicated a relationship between deaths caused by the Coronavirus and the electoral choice made in the presidential election before the pandemic (in 2018). The new analysis, referring to the most recent presidential election, confirms that this trend has not changed, even after the consequences of the health emergency.
According to the survey of data for 2018 and 2022, in general, for every 1% increase in municipal votes for Bolsonaro, there was a 0.48% to 0.64% increase in mortality in the city or town during the worst periods of the pandemic. The study points out that this correlation may be related to the influence the former president – now ineligible – had on his electorate.
“Disbelief about the harmful effects of the pandemic, non-acceptance of the use of masks, initial resistance to the purchase of vaccines and the slow implementation of an immunization campaign may be some of the reasons for this association between Bolsonaro's votes and high mortality.”
The results indicate that not even the high number of deaths observed throughout the pandemic seemed to affect Bolsonaro voters from one election to the next. On the other hand, the municipalities that voted the most for Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's Workers’ Party candidacy showed no association with the increase in COVID-related mortality.
According to the study, the phenomenon can also be related to the concepts of tribal politics and affective polarization. The first term refers to “a political environment dominated by voters whose predominant concern is ‘those with us and those against us’ and who support candidates who represent their ethnic, religious or group beliefs, regardless of the policy they [politicians] promote.”
Affective polarization, on the other hand, occurs when there is a broad feeling of rejection towards certain political groups. In Brazil, it is very much represented by the so-called “antipetismo”, which means the revulsion against Workers’ Party supporters (known in Portuguese as "petistas").
“In concrete terms, supporters with high hostility towards other political parties are more prone to distinguish themselves from their political opponents. They tend to adopt positions on new issues that differ from those of the other party and match those of their preferred party.”
The research used data from the Mortality Information System (SIM, in Portuguese), the Ministry of Health, Electoral Justice and the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE, in Portuguese).
To find the highest fatality rates, a comparison was made between the total number of deaths during the worst moments of the pandemic, and the monthly average number of deaths in the five years before the health emergency. The analysis considered votes cast in the first round of each presidential election.
The analysis was carried out in collaboration with Fiocruz Bahia and the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA, in Portuguese) and published in the scientific journal “Cadernos de Saúde Pública”.
Edited by: Thalita Pires
