They say they trust their own political group in almost the same proportion as they trust their families, according to a survey obtained by Sheet and carried out by ConnectLab, FGV’s new study center, in partnership with Quaest.
On a scale of 0 to 10, Bolsonaro supporters have a trust level of 8.3 in their own families, on average, while PT members reached a value of 7.5. In relation to their own political groups, the values are only slightly lower, being 7.8 and 7.3 respectively.
As a result, the trust reported by both in people from their own group is greater than what they say they have in people in general — an index that was 4.5 among both Bolsonaristas and PT members.
And if the level of trust already drops significantly in this comparison, it plummets in relation to the opposite group. For Bolsonaro supporters in relation to PT members, the value reached 0.8, on average, while that of PT members in relation to Bolsonaro supporters is equally low, standing at 1.
2,004 people aged 16 or over were interviewed from August 13 to 17, 2025, the margin of error for the total survey sample is plus or minus 2 percentage points.
For Nara Pavão, a professor at UFPE (Federal University of Pernambuco) who is part of the group that conducted the study, these data are both indicative of the strength of the supporters of the president () and the former president () in Brazilian society and show the size of the gap that separates them.
“You have this tendency to trust your group as if it were your family and to distrust the other group more than I distrust strangers, which are people in general,” she says. “This reveals the strength of these groups, because, see, trust in the family is the highest trust we have in Brazil.”
Another aspect of the research sought to map the extent to which one group could or could not be dehumanizing the other. The result is alarming. Both PT and Bolsonarists classify their group as inversely more evolved than the opposite group.
“We created a scale of humanization with that famous figure that goes from monkey to A wise manof the evolution of man. We put up that figure and asked people to classify at what point in human evolution the Bolsonarists and PT members would be”, says Felipe Nunes, who is director of Quaest and professor at FGV’s São Paulo School of Economics.
While the PT members’ classification regarding their own evolution index, on a scale of 0 to 10, is on average 8.2, they place the Bolsonarists on the opposite side: 2.4. The same occurs among Bolsonarists, who classify themselves, on average, with a score of 8.5 on the evolution scale, as opposed to a score of 2.5 attributed to PT members.
“I’ve been talking a lot. And it’s very impressive how Bolsonarists and PT members, in a symmetrical way, dehumanize their opponents”, says Nunes, who is also coordinator of ConnectLab. “This story that polarization is asymmetric, we don’t agree, our evidence here is quite symmetric. One side sees the other as inhumane as the other.”
According to Nunes, the idea is to repeat the survey annually to monitor issues such as polarization, distrust and support for democracy.
The data collected in this first round also shows how much polarization ends up interfering in everyday personal relationships.
Among the different groups from right to left, all, with the exception of those who classified themselves as independent, said, for the most part, that they would not enroll their children in a school where the majority of parents and students were from the opposite political group.
A similar scenario occurs in the question of whether people would start going to a market further away from their homes if they discovered that the owner of the nearest store was from the political group opposite to theirs – showing that political position is not irrelevant to this decision-making.
Likewise, research indicates the impact of political differences on friendship relationships. In all groups, with the exception of those who consider themselves independent, there are at least 50% of those who say they would reduce contact with a friend who was from the other political group, in addition to those who would stop having contact.
The study also reveals that a significant portion of Brazilians believe that members of the political group opposite to theirs want to support them (75%, adding those who believe a lot with those who believe a little) and even pass harmful laws against them (74%) – with the exception of independents, all segments had homogeneous results in these two items.
Perception of polarization
Respondents were asked how they classify themselves politically, 31% say they are independent, 25% are on the right and 13% are Bolsonarists, while those who say they are leftist were 15%, while 16% classify themselves as PT members.
On the other hand, when asked what they believe to be the size of these groups, respondents paint another perceived scenario: independents (15%), right-wing (19%), Bolsonaro supporters (25%), left-wing (15%) and PT members (26%).
Based on these numbers, Nara and Nunes estimate that what is perceived by the population would be greater than what it actually is. While inflating estimates about their own groups, independents underestimate their size.
Nara highlights that, in practice, what really matters is perception, as it would end up contributing to people becoming even more polarized, generating a kind of vicious cycle.
