One of the common refrains of the first five months of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s unprecedented third term is that his is a fragile mandate. In the runoff election, we are frequently reminded, Lula beat Jair Bolsonaro by just over 2 million votes out of 118.5 million ballots cast.
Lula must govern with the mindset that his was the narrowest of majorities rather than appealing excessively to his traditional base.
To fail in that regard is to invite a right-wing resurgence in four years. One way to read recent poll numbers is that the president has cause for concern amid the culture wars that have come to define Brazilian politics in the past decade.
New results released by Ipec, a renowned pollster, indicate that the rate of Brazilian voters who consider Lula to be doing a good or great job dropped two percentage points between April to May — and...
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