Explaining Brazil

Lula finished Brazil's first round almost 2 points behind Flávio Bolsonaro, his weakest first-round result since 1998. Gustavo Ribeiro and historian James Green (Brown University) look at what went wrong for the president and what the October 25 runoff could look like.

They talk through why solid macroeconomic numbers didn't add up to votes, The Brazilian Report's data showing Lula underperformed his 2022 score in 98% of municipalities, the PT's struggles on social media, and where right-wing and abstaining voters may go. They also debate whether a narrow Flávio victory would bring a real mandate, given the Liberal Party's record congressional gains, and what his presidency could mean for pardons, the Constitution, social programs, and relations with Washington and Beijing. The episode closes with the Workers' Party's coming leadership crisis.

Watch the video version on YouTube to see our municipal-level data visualization. For more coverage, go to brazilian.report.

Brazilians vote on Sunday, October 4, and President Lula is asking for a fourth term on the strength of his economic record. Growth averaged 3% a year, unemployment is at a record low, and real wages are rising. His approval still sits barely above 40%.

Luciano Sobral, chief economist and partner at Neo Investimentos, gives Lula's economy a B minus. He explains how double-digit interest rates and record household debt have eaten into the gains, why a windfall in tax revenue failed to stabilize public debt, and what Flávio Bolsonaro's team is actually offering as an alternative. He also tells investors what to expect from markets in the first 100 days under either winner.

Hosted by Gustavo Ribeiro, editor-in-chief of The Brazilian Report.

Explaining Brazil returns on Election Day, October 4, with a live broadcast.

Brazil votes on Sunday, and the final week of the campaign has turned on religion. A rumor that a Flávio Bolsonaro government would strip Our Lady of Aparecida of her title as Brazil's patron saint has spread through Catholic circles. The Bolsonaro campaign has reacted furiously, going as far as accusing the National Conference of Brazilian Bishops of spreading fake news. Gustavo Ribeiro and historian James Green (Brown University) explain why the controversy touches both devout Catholics and people who simply value the October 12 holiday, and why the Catholic vote may matter more than analysts assumed.

They also look at President Lula's last-minute moves. These include a provisional decree banning online betting, a third round of his debt relief program, and a pledge to offer weight-loss drugs through the public health system. Gustavo and James discuss whether these measures can reach undecided voters in a race where polls give Lula a three- to five-point lead. They also compare Lula's pre-election spending with Jair Bolsonaro's 2022 payroll loans for welfare recipients.

Join us live on election night, Sunday, October 4, from 5 pm (Brasília time), for English-language coverage of the results.

Explaining Brazil is an independent podcast by The Brazilian Report, funded by subscribers. Subscribe at brazilian.report or support us at buymeacoffee.com/brazilianreport.

Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro are statistically tied less than two weeks before Brazil's first round, and a flood of contradictory polls is feeding claims that pollsters are rigging the race.

Rafael Nishimura, director of sampling operations at the University of Michigan's Survey Research Center, joins Gustavo Ribeiro to explain how Brazilian polls are made, why online surveys and crosstab headlines mislead, how late deciders complicate the picture, and what prediction markets add. He also grades Brazil's pollsters and gives his read on the odds.

For years, Brazil's Supreme Court picked fights with Congress and the presidency. This month it turned on itself. On September 15, the full court sat for more than seven hours to answer a question it has dodged for 130 years, and walked away without an answer.

Gustavo Ribeiro is joined by Brown University historian James Green to unpack what happened inside that session, why it looked more like a schoolyard brawl than the country's highest court, and how a scandal involving a jailed banker and a BRL 130 million contract has swallowed the entire campaign three weeks before Brazilians go to the polls.

They also dig into whether the polls are missing a shy Bolsonaro vote, why one far-right candidate is now accusing Flávio Bolsonaro of being bankrolled from Washington, and what happens if Lula wins by a hair and Trump refuses to recognize the result.

Brazil's Supreme Court is facing what may be the worst crisis in its history. Justice André Mendonça unsealed the Banco Master investigation, exposing messages between the bank's former CEO and Justice Alexandre de Moraes. Now two factions of the court are openly at war, less than a month before the first round of the presidential election.

Gustavo Ribeiro and James Green break down how the scandal reached every corner of the political spectrum, why Brazilians are left choosing between impunity and disregard for due process, and whether this fight could tip a race that polls call a toss-up.

Two polls released Monday shook the political establishment. Augusto Cury, of the small Avante party, took third place in both: 11% in Nexus's survey, 7.8% in Atlas Intel's.

The numbers force rivals and analysts to take Cury seriously for the first time since he entered the race. His rise followed two bursts of exposure: the Aug. 23 presidential debate, which Flávio Bolsonaro, Lula, and Romeu Zema all skipped, and last week's Jornal Nacional interview. His asset appears to be a rhetoric that refuses polarization, suggesting the third way's failure to gain traction has been a problem of supply rather than demand.

The Brazilian Report's editor-in-chief, Gustavo Ribeiro, and James Green, the Brown University historian who chairs the Brazil Office Alliance, discussed what Cury's rise means for the race on our latest joint podcast.

Brazil's 2026 campaign is officially underway, and almost all the attention will be on the presidential race. That's a problem, because power in Brazil is increasingly won and lost in Congress — where the budget is controlled and where any president's agenda lives or dies.

Gustavo Ribeiro and James Green are joined by political scientist Beatriz Rey, a researcher at the University of Lisbon, who recently coordinated a Fernando Henrique Cardoso Foundation policy paper with Sergio Fausto on how to fix the way Congress operates.

Her argument isn't that Congress got too strong. Two decades of incremental change made the legislature a genuine co-policymaker, and that part is healthy.

The trouble is that much of that strength was built through the back door: a Leaders' Council that met in restaurants and living rooms instead of the chamber, hybrid sessions designed for a pandemic that never went away, provisional decrees that expire because nobody bothers to vote, a speaker who can yank any bill out of committee, and informal working groups that now write entire bills with no paper trail and no obligation to reflect the party balance of the House.

The US State Department revoked the visa of Brazil's ambassador to Washington and said the quiet part out loud: it is retaliation for Brasília withholding agrément from Trump's pick to serve as the ambassador to Brazil. Two months before the first round, that is not a protocol dispute. It is leverage.

Gustavo Ribeiro is joined by James Green, professor at Brown University and chairman of the board of the Washington Brazil Office, to unpack the escalation and what it may be building toward — including the case that isolating Brazil lays the groundwork for questioning the October results.

They also take stock of the rest of a rough week in the neighborhood: relations with Argentina downgraded to chargé d'affaires level after Javier Milei's insults delivered on Brazilian soil, and Lula's unforced error on Paraguay, which reopened the wound of the War of the Triple Alliance. On the same day the visa news broke, Marco Rubio was hosting Paraguay's vice president and signing a nuclear cooperation deal.

Then to the campaign: Flávio Bolsonaro's running mate, why no major party wants to join either ticket, and how the public campaign fund and TV ad rules quietly favor the incumbent.

The US now takes less than 10% of Brazil's exports — the smallest share in decades — and Washington's tariff wall is accelerating a realignment that was already underway.

Gustavo Ribeiro speaks with trade consultant Welber Barral, a former Brazilian foreign trade secretary (2007-11), about what the Section 301 tariffs are doing to exporters on the ground, why more than 30 rounds of talks produced nothing, and why Brasília will not sign the deal Washington handed Argentina. They also discuss Brazil's reciprocity law, the lobbying campaign to suspend US patents, and whether an election year makes retaliation more likely or less likely.