The perception is that there is something wrong in our institutions. I would even say it is almost consensual in public opinion that relationships between are dysfunctional. This extends to the own functioning of the country. We do not have data for 2025, but according to research on the satisfaction with democracy in September 2024, Brazil is slightly below the global median which is 45%.
Only 44% of the population declares to be satisfied with that in the country, while 54% express some degree of dissatisfaction, of which 30% claim to be “unattended”. Paradoxically, we see an increase and not decline of 7 percentage points compared to 2023. Brazil operates in the opposite trend of high -income democracies, in which it is observed a sharp drop in recent years (from 49% in 2021 to 36% in 2024) in satisfaction with democracy.
But the most exciting to analyze the “malaise” in the current conjuncture about democracy is how it varies between groups of voters. This variation gives us the key to the current negative consensus on the functioning of democracy. The perception of how the functioning of the institutions is shaped by several factors already identified in research on the subject. A decisive factor is that it differs between the winners and election losers (“Winner-O Gap” in jargon).
There are also strong ideological cleavages: between leftist voters, 56% are satisfied; among the right, only 35%. The most determining factor, however, is the alignment with the government: supporters of the governing coalition report satisfaction levels 25 percentage points higher than opponents.
These data reveal a common pattern in polarized democracies: it is filtered by the party bond, and the perception of political responsiveness becomes more volatile. Democracy is seen more confidently when “my side” is in power, and more suspiciously when in opposition.
What seems to be happening at the moment is the fall of satisfaction with democracy among the winners, that is, among the supporters of the governing coalition. In “Strange Bedfellows: Coalition Make-Up and Perceptions of Democratic Performance Among Electoral Winners”, Electral Studies, 2016 (Strange Partners: Coalition Composition and Performance Performance of Democracy between Victorious Victorial Voters), the authors use microdates of research with 18,000 voters from 46 countries to test the winner-won cleavage in governments. coalition.
They conclude that coalition partners import to satisfaction with democracy. In cases where there are what the authors call the “coalition ambivalence” – in that, if coalition partners are rejected – the government assessment and the functioning of democracy gets worse.
The misfortune makes strange bed companions (Shakespeare, “The Storm”). When the executive weakens, they turn their backs to them. Thus, among voters, the winners see themselves as losers. Governing with bad company charges a price between victorious. But among the losers.
Gift Link: Did you like this text? Subscriber can release seven free hits from any link per day. Just click on F Blue below.
