Unifying Brazil will be Lula’s biggest challenge in office

In the aftermath of Sunday’s violent riots in Brazil’s federal capital, which caused widespread damage to the seats of all three branches of power, prominent political figures were quick to blame the events on a “putschist minority” that exists in Brazilian society.

Senate President Rodrigo Pacheco defined the aforementioned minority as “anti-democratic,” “coup-mongering,” and “extremist,” promising that it would not succeed in imposing its will by way of “barbarism, force, and criminal acts.”

The government’s press secretary, Paulo Pimenta, used similar terms, blaming the attacks on a “putschist minority that does not accept the result of the [2022] election.”

Last year’s vote certainly provided evidence of an ideological divide in Brazil. The outgoing far-right president Jair Bolsonaro lost to the center-left Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva by less than two percentage points, after more than 100 million people turned out to vote for two candidates who, in many regards, are the polar opposites of each other.

However, while such anti-democratic views and violent tendencies are no doubt not shared by more than 50 percent of the Brazilian population — nor 100 percent of those who voted for Mr. Bolsonaro in October of last year — the question remains as to how large this putschist minority actually is.

On the evening of the Brasília riots and throughout the following day, pollster Atlas Intel collected responses from an opinion survey to measure the public’s reaction to the events that they had seen unfolding on their television screens.

Three-quarters of respondents disagreed with the attacks and largely blamed Brasília Governor Ibaneis Rocha and the local military police for things getting so out of hand, but a...