Ineligible since June 2023, former president Jair Bolsonaro still directly impacts the course of the 2026 elections — but his arrest at the Federal Police Superintendence, decreed on November 22 of this year, accelerated the movement of the electoral chess and the search for alliances.
For experts, the bifurcation in the conservative camp is a reality. The Bolsonaro right-wing will continue to compete for a portion of the electorate with Flávio Bolsonaro’s pre-candidacy for the Presidency, while parties more aligned with the center may seek a “moderate” candidate who will please investors more, but who will not cause economic instability with heated decisions.
For political scientist and professor at the Institute of International Relations at UnB, Roberto Goulart, the central question is to understand whether the center-right has space to make a candidate viable after having invested for years in the presence of the Bolsonaro surname in different electoral disputes.
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“Jair Bolsonaro is managing to transfer votes to his son. And this is due to an important element: the established surname. We see that the social base of Bolsonaroism continues to be mobilized”, he states. “The first electoral polls show that the candidate to run in Bolsonaro’s place already has more than 30 points in the survey, much better than, for example, the governor of São Paulo, Tarcísio de Freitas”.
The most recent data from the Genial/Quaest survey, released on Tuesday (16), shows an ambiguous scenario for Tarcísio’s name. The governor is the right-wing candidate least rejected by voters (47%), but, when asked about the viability of his candidacy, only 10% consider voting for the Republicans.
Flávio Bolsonaro, on the other hand, has 28% voting potential, but faces significantly greater rejection (60%).
The comparison with other names in the conservative field helps to assess the political assets of the São Paulo governor, who disappoints in relation to the expectations of the conservative field.
Prison empties conservative speech
If the surname Bolsonaro influences the polls in 2026, the history linked to the figure of its patriarch, Jair Bolsonaro, will certainly have weight. In Goulart’s view, the former president’s arrest calls into question one of the main themes defended by the family: the fight against corruption.
“Jair Bolsonaro is not a political prisoner, but it is clear that part of his base and the media aligned with his project try to promote this narrative”, he states. “But Bolsonaro was not the only one convicted, we even have generals arrested. Other than that, we have very atypical behavior, such as deputies fleeing the country [Alexandre Ramagem e Carla Zambelli]. This entire factor shortens the chance of questioning the legality of these arrests”, says the political scientist.
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Goulart argues that the attitudes of Bolsonaro’s allies and former allies in the face of the STF’s convictions weaken the discourse of being a victim of the system and create an opportunity for another right-wing candidate to compete for the Bolsonaro vote.
Tarcísio, for example, criticized the former president’s arrest from a humanitarian point of view, raising questions about Jair’s health and his advanced age, 70 years, to face false imprisonment — but he did not question the legality of the sentence imposed.
“This vote is at risk, but it is too early for us to embark on a migration. We have to wait for the polls in March and April, which already have a definition of candidates, to understand whether Flávio will have opponents in the conservative camp and who they will be”, he states.
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Candidacy is hostage to family history
Eduardo Bolsonaro’s attempt in the United States, seeking sanctions to pressure the Brazilian government and Judiciary in the name of Jair Bolsonaro, worsens the political scenario for the senator.
Flávio enters the dispute hostage to the pressure imposed by his brother, while carrying the history of his father’s arrest, with the promise of trying to sell himself as a moderate. The question, however, is which electorate he has left.
This year, Flávio even celebrated on social media, and later in interviews, the sanctions imposed on Brazil by the United States. With negotiations in the US deteriorating and Trump’s retreat from both tariffs and the application of the Magnitsky Act, the senator chose to remain silent.
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“If Flávio Bolsonaro tries to separate himself from his brother, but at the same time does not show any distrust towards Eduardo’s attitudes, I don’t see much room for him to try to adopt this moderate stance”, he says. “This attitude may sound negative. Voters know that he has nothing moderate. It sounds false.”
