Politics and mafias still go hand in hand in Rio

President Jair Bolsonaro’s last day of campaigning ahead of the October 30 presidential runoff was spent in Belford Roxo — a city in the neglected Baixada Fluminense suburbs of Rio de Janeiro — and Campo Grande, a working-class neighborhood in Rio city’s sprawling west zone.

Mr. Bolsonaro would go on to lose the election to his leftist rival Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva with 49.1 percent of the vote to 50.9 percent — but he won 60 percent of the vote in Belford Roxo and as much as 64 percent in parts of Campo Grande. Overall, Mr. Bolsonaro won 52.6 percent of the vote in the city of Rio, and 56.5 percent in Rio de Janeiro state as a whole.

As well as their preference for Mr. Bolsonaro, Belford Roxo, Campo Grande, and many other districts in Greater Rio that voted for the incumbent share at least one other common feature: the presence of mafia-like organized crime groups known as milícias, often translated into English as ‘militias.’ 

And it appears that the link between Mr. Bolsonaro’s electoral strength and these paramilitary mafias’ territorial dominance is not coincidental.

The militia effect

A study by the Observatory of Metropolises research group found that districts under the control of paramilitary mafias in Greater Rio tended to vote more heavily for Mr. Bolsonaro and parties in his conservative coalition in the first round — a phenomenon dubbed the ‘militia effect.’

Almost one quarter of voters in Greater Rio live under armed control: 9.7 percent in areas controlled by drug traffickers, and 14.8 percent in neighborhoods controlled by paramilitary mafias. And in these areas controlled by militias, Mr. Bolsonaro received more support. He beat Lula by eight percentage points in Rio’s metro area in the first round, but the gap widens to 14 points in militia-controlled districts.

The study...