Good morning! This week, how the Workers’ Party tries to lure Evangelical voters to the left. Jair Bolsonaro’s trip to India. Brazil’s lost decade. (This newsletter is for premium and standard subscribers only. Become one now!)
The Workers’ Party bidding for Evangelical voters
In his effort to bring his Workers’ Party back to power, former President Lula has ordered the party’s state chapters to create “Evangelical cores,” and even plans the launch of a sort of Evangelical summit.
Why it matters. Evangelicals are the fastest-growing religious group in Brazil, accounting for 30 percent of the population, according to some estimates. It is also a populational cluster that is strongly averse to the Workers’ Party.
Evangelical growth, explained. A group of economists at think tank Fundação Getulio Vargas studied the relation between the impact of economic crises on people’s religious behavior.
- They crafted a hypothesis according to which areas that suffered the most in recent economic downturns observed the biggest surge in Evangelical churches. For each 1-percent loss in revenue during the 1990s, they identified a 0.8-percent growth in the number of Evangelicals.
- “These churches give vulnerable populations a solidarity network the state has failed to,” Francisco Costa, one...