Marta Mendes da Rocha

The Municipal Elections that will be held next November 15 in Brazil have attracted wide attention from the media and academics. Many reasons make this election special and in the following lines, I address the two ways in which they can be analyzed. The first one refers to the central role municipalities play in Brazil since the Constitution was adopted in 1988, which elevated municipalities to the status of federative entities, the same level as states. Local governments play crucial roles in delivering essential social services to citizens, such as education (child education and elementary school), health (primary health care), and social protection. They are also in charge of regulations and public services concerning lighting, urban planning, use of land, road maintenance, traffic, urban sanitation, and waste collection, among other responsibilities traditionally assigned to local administrations with direct impacts on people’s lives and the environment.

Even when accounting for the institutional reforms of the 90s and 2000s, which concentrated fiscal resources in the central government, local governments remain responsible for an important proportion of public spending. They have the authority to institute taxes and can count on constitutional and discretionary fiscal transfers from upper levels of government. They can comply with central and state programs and put forward their own ones, giving them the possibility to design specific policies to meet local features and problems, something crucial in a country with a large territory and expressive interregional inequalities. It is worth noticing that municipalities in Brazil vary a lot in population size, ranging from small towns with less than 1,000 inhabitants to big cities such as São Paulo with 12.3 million people, and the complexity of problems and citizen demands vary equally among them. Notwithstanding these differences, the fact is that the performance of the local government does make a difference.

Therefore, the first aspect of the Brazilian local elections is the one focused on a local agenda and on what local representatives can do once in office. The fact that municipal elections are held separately from state and national races draws media attention and furthers the tendency that voters will take local issues into account when deciding their vote. In the upcoming elections, postponed to November 15, due to the Coronavirus pandemic, voters will choose local councilors and mayors in more than 5,500 municipalities. The elected representatives will serve four-year terms and this year, as a result of the great renewal that took place in 2016, almost 80% of the mayors are apt to run for a second term.

One of the consequences of the political autonomy assured to the municipalities is their strengthening as arenas of political and electoral competition. Besides, more inclusive electoral process and more representative legislative bodies are expected. The underlying assumption is that barriers to entry into the political system would be lower at the local level, which could contribute to the inclusion of traditionally underrepresented groups (women, blacks, and indigenous people, for example) and the emergence of new political forces. Indeed, compared to state and national legislative bodies, local councils seem more representative of the society and their members look more like ordinary citizens. 

Actually, there are different perspectives on the role of municipalities in Brazilian political life. On one hand, they are taken as space for the renewal of the political system, the emergence of innovative forms of public governance, and mechanisms of popular participation with the potential to transform and democratize the relations between state and society. On the other hand, they are seen, especially the poor ones, as the last strongholds of traditional bosses, as settings where clientelism and vote buying thrive and the traditional political elites maintain the population in a situation of dependency despite all legal efforts to curb such practices. It seems clear that neither of these perspectives can in itself, capture the dynamics of local politics in Brazil.

For this upcoming election, females represent 34% of the total candidates. Although they are still underrepresented, this number accounts for the biggest mark ever achieved in Brazilian local elections. In addition, for the first time in history candidates who self-declared black or brown outnumbered those who self-identify as white. These figures are probably the result of a rule applied for the first time in Brazilian local elections that stipulate that parties must reserve 30% of campaign funds and electoral propaganda for female and black candidates. With regard to the position of mayors, disparities are still expressive: women contribute only with 17% of the total of candidates while blacks appear with 35% despite their being the majority (56.2%) of the population.

This year, some aspects and innovations can impact the electoral process in an unexpected way. Firstly, for the first time in Brazilian democratic history, parties are not allowed to form allegiances in proportional elections. This led specialists to anticipate a significant increase in the number of candidates as a strategy to overcome electoral barriers, but this expectation did not materialize. The second innovation concerns the aforementioned rule, which imposes to the parties the allocation of 30% of campaign funds for female and black candidates. 

Third, these elections will take place amid the biggest sanitary crisis in a century. The decision of holding the election in a single day has raised concerns regarding security and voter turnout. The challenge will be to get people to the polls amid a pandemic, avoiding an unprecedented rise in electoral abstention rates in the country, where voting is mandatory for people aged 18 to 70, and at the same time a new explosion of Covid cases. Besides, the pandemic has impacted the very way in which campaigns are carried out in the country, with consequences on voter engagement. Although an increase in the importance of social media as a vehicle of political information is expected, it will probably be restricted to big cities, where people are more connected. In small towns – exactly the ones who lack the health infrastructure required for severe cases of Covid-19 – specialists fear that face-to-face electoral campaigns contribute to increasing the disease numbers.  

In addition to all the above-mentioned aspects, these will be the first elections held under Jair Bolsonaro’s administration, which brings us to the other side of the question. Beyond the immediate consequences of the elections for local governance, the municipal races are frequently addressed for its effects over the national and state elections to be held two years later. Specialists consider that in some way they are a rehearsal for national elections, allowing anticipation of the main trends. There is some evidence that mayors, as the most notable leaders at the local level, can perform an important role in providing support for those running for legislative and executive offices at the higher levels. Besides, the performance of the parties in the municipal elections across the country creates an organizational infrastructure indispensable to their success in the national polls. This explains why state and national representatives put significant time and effort in setting up alliances in the municipal races.

It is also expected that the president, given the preeminence of his position, has a critical influence in local elections. It can be decisive, for mayors running for a second term and also for challengers, to show proximity to the central government, as a sign of their ability to channel resources to cities and small towns, especially for those highly dependent on the transfers from the higher levels of government. In this sense, some of the questions raised are: to what extent will the 2020 municipal elections somehow reflect what is going on at the national level? Will candidates try to associate their image to the president, as in the past? Specialists and the media also ask if this election will confirm the tendency of strengthening of right-wing parties and candidates with an anti-establishment message deepening the erosion of traditional parties and the political elite. Finally, it is asked if and to what extent the government responses to the Coronavirus pandemic will influence the voter decision. At this point, less than one month away from local elections, there is still much uncertainty in the air and it is hard to figure out answers to these questions. Still, there are some clues that can help us to identify the main trends.

Since he took office in January 2019, Bolsonaro has pushed towards the reconfiguration of intergovernmental relationships, a move that has been expressed in the slogan “Less Brasília, more Brazil”. This means an attempt to radically change the way responsibilities and fiscal resources are shared among the federative entities with the purpose of “devolving” to municipalities the highest amount of resources and responsibilities over policies. To a great extent, this proposal meets one of the main claims of mayors who constantly complain about what they see as a concentration of resources in the central government. With this exception, which until now is nothing but a promise, the relationship between mayors and Bolsonaro’s administration has been marked by tensions expressed in multiple reprovals by the main municipal representative organizations. This animosity has become even more dramatic during the pandemic, not only because of the omissions of the central government and the lack of support for the struggles of subnational governments against Covid, but also due to the numerous attempts of the president to avoid any responsibilities for the more than 150,000 deaths and to blame state governors and mayors which adopted social distancing measures.

Months ago, Bolsonaro declared that he would not engage in the 2020 municipal elections. Indeed, differently from former presidents, Bolsonaro has hitherto only declared explicit support for five candidates in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, Manaus, and Fortaleza. Only in the latter, the president’s candidate is the front runner, even so, with few chances of a win in the first round. Some indications point that siding with Bolsonaro will not be a good electoral strategy for those running for mayor. In São Paulo, the biggest city in the country, Datafolha polls show that 63% of respondents would not vote for a candidate supported by the president. In Rio de Janeiro, an important constituency for the Bolsonaro clan, 59% of the respondents said they would not vote for candidate support by him. 53% in Belo Horizonte and 63% in Fortaleza answered in the same direction. 

Bolsonaro has the worst recall for a president in the second year in office, with 40% of approval according to the Ibope survey carried out last September. Furthermore, Bolsonaro and his family have been surrounded by multiple corruption scandals, with large media coverage. It is important to consider that since 2019 Bolsonaro holds the presidency without being affiliated with a political party. Despite the consensus about the fragile social roots of Brazilian parties, there is no doubt that they remain fundamental in the electoral process. 

This does not mean that there is no room for an advance of right-wing parties and politicians focused on “law and order politics” and moral issues, especially those regarding sexuality and family. The media reports an increase of 12.5% in military candidates including military and civil police, firefighters, members of the Armed Forces, and retired military personnel. Together they add up 6,700 candidates for the position of mayors and local councilors in the whole country, the highest number since 2004. They also show that 8,700 candidates adopt a religious title in the name that will show up in the polls, reinforcing the tendency of increasing social relevance and political engagement of religious leaders, especially those from Evangelical churches. 

Municipal candidates were expected to try to repeat the winning formula employed by Bolsonaro in 2018, based on an anti-establishment message, tempered with moral issues, attacks on the left and on minorities, and promises to change gun control legislation. What is not entirely clear is to what extent this message can still produce the same results as in recent years. It is important to recall the crucial role played by Operation Car Wash in creating an anti-political atmosphere which resulted in unprecedented political renewal in 2016 and the success of many candidates until then completely unknown to the great public, which took place in important electoral districts in Brazil, both in 2016 and 2018.  

There is evidence that other issues may prevail in the upcoming elections, in part as a consequence of the Coronavirus pandemic. Since the outbreak started, government responses to the pandemic have been led by state governors and mayors, partly due to the Brazilian federative structure, partly as a result of the omissions of the central government. State governors and mayors adopted several measures to reduce the spread of the disease and mitigate its human and economic impacts. Multiple analyses offer a rich account of how the president refused to take the problem seriously, challenged the authority and expertise of public health officials, disseminated information, and recommended treatments without a scientific basis. In so doing, the central government created obstacles for the population to comply with the social distancing measures implemented by subnational governments. The same effect was caused by the delay in providing financial assistance to vulnerable citizens and the delay in the transfers approved for municipalities and states, which should be applied to fight the pandemic. 

Although the measures enacted by mayors have aroused negative reactions by some social groups, polls show that, within three months of the beginning of the outbreak, a majority of people declared approval for the social distancing measures adopted by the subnational governments. Nevertheless, in general, the approval numbers of the mayors are not the best. Between May and August, the positive evaluation of the incumbents ranged between 32% and 36%. The negative evaluation fluctuated from 23% in May to 30% in August. Notwithstanding the lack of solidarity shown by Bolsonaro towards the victims of Covid, in August, when Brazil surpassed 100,000 deaths, a Datafolha poll showed that 47% of the respondents did not hold the president accountable for the pandemic numbers and only 11% considered Bolsonaro the main responsible. Thus, it is not entirely clear to what extent voters’ evaluations of how the president and mayors have handled the crisis will influence their decision of who to vote for. 

Health care invariably appears in public opinion polls as the biggest concern among citizens, followed by unemployment and security. This tendency was reinforced since the beginning of the Covid pandemic, which had among its countless effects that of pointing out the gaps in the public health system. However, perhaps more importantly, the pandemic may have had the effect of highlighting the critical role played by political leaderships and the damaging consequences that ensue when they refuse or prove unable to carry out the actions required by extraordinary events.