Podcast

Explaining Brazil #31: The final stretch of the presidential election

Last Saturday, hundreds of thousands of women took to the streets to demonstrate against far-right presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro. The congressman who leads the presidential race has publicly called women ignorant, too ugly to rape, and undeserving of the same salary as men.

Two days later, Ibope, one of Brazil’s most prestigious opinion polling institutes, published a new poll – and the numbers were quite surprising. Jair Bolsonaro rose by 4 points, to 31 percent, while Workers’ Party candidate Fernando Haddad stalled at 21 percent.

But the most surprising thing about Ibope’s numbers was that Bolsonaro actually polled better among women – growing 6 percentage points among female voters.

As usual, if it hasn’t been mad enough already, Brazil’s presidential election is getting even crazier over the final days.

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On this podcast

Gustavo Ribeiro has extensive experience covering Brazilian politics. His work has been featured across Brazilian and French media outlets, including Veja, Época, Folha de São Paulo, Médiapart and Radio France Internationale. He is the recipient of multiple awards, including the Abril Prize for outstanding political journalism. He holds a master’s degree in Political Science and Latin American studies from Panthéon-Sorbonne University in Paris.

Alana Rizzo is an award-winning political journalist, who is now an analyst for the Albright Stonebridge Group. She has served as a director of the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism (ABRAJI) for eight years, where she coordinated projects about freedom of expression, gender equality and access to public information.

Diogo Rodriguez is a journalist and social scientist. He has contributed to publications such as Folha de S. Paulo, Estado de S. Paulo, Trip, Vida Simples, Galileu, Mundo Estranho, Exame, and Vice, among others. He is currently pursuing a master’s degree in political science at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo.

Maria Martha Bruno edited this podcast. She is a journalist with 14 years of experience in politics, arts, and breaking news. She has collaborated with Al Jazeera and CNN, among others, worked as a producer in Rio de Janeiro for NBC, and as an international correspondent in Buenos Aires.

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