A loss for Trump is a loss for Bolsonaro? Not so fast

October was not a good month for conservative forces around the Americas. In Bolivia, one year after being pushed out in a right-wing military coup, the left-wing Movement for Socialism party was swept back into office by an electoral landslide. In Chile, a referendum to rewrite the country’s dictatorship-era constitution passed with an overwhelming 78 percent of the vote. And in the U.S., incumbent President Donald Trump is edging ever closer to a defeat at the polls, when the country decides its future on November 3.

But in Brazil, one of the largest countries in the world to be run by an openly far-right government, are there any signs of President Jair Bolsonaro’s grip slipping?

November will be a crucial point for the Bolsonaro government. Elections in the U.S. have ripple effects on practically every administration around the world, but few more so than Brazil’s, where much of Mr. Bolsonaro’s first term has been spent hitching his political future to Donald Trump’s. Were his political idol to lose next Tuesday’s election, there are suggestions that this would impact his own political clout. Brazil’s municipal elections later in the month could also signal a change in the winds of Brazilian politics.

However, analyses that suggest a defeat for Mr. Trump will ultimately bring down the government in Brazil ignore much of the characteristics of Bolsonarism, which thrives when its back is against the wall.

No-one likes us, we don’t care

In a previous article for The Brazilian Report back in July, I wrote that “Mr. Bolsonaro’s biggest foreign policy gamble was...