An election year is always full of predictions, as will 2026, which is about to begin. Predictions almost always contradicted by facts, executioners of the reputation of soothsayers.
Some of these denials have accompanied presidential elections since the first of the new democratic era.
Who, in January 1989, would have chosen that in December among two dozen candidates experienced both in the dictatorship and in the trenches of opposition to the regime?
leaving people like Ulysses Guimarães (PMDB), Mário Covas (PSDB), Paulo Maluf (PDS), Leonel Brizola (PDT) and 16 other competitors.
Five years and one impeachment later, in 1994 he was elected. Fernando Henrique Cardoso (PSDB) started the campaign with low levels of voting intention in the polls and beat Lula in the first round.
but he would not be able to succeed. The year 2002 began with bets on Roseana Sarney (PFL), whose candidacy collapsed along with the display of photos of money seized in her husband’s office.
José Serra (PSDB) would then be the favorite, but the PT member turned the tide under the auspices of the Letter to the Brazilian People and the revamped “Lulinha Paz e Amor”, works by Antonio Palocci and Duda Mendonça.
In the political turmoil of , Lula’s re-election seemed impossible, but he not only managed it (2006) but also . Nothing in 2014 indicated that she would be prevented from doing so in 2016.
And what about a member of the lower clergy? At the beginning of the year, Jair Bolsonaro (PSL) was a joke, the center was still betting on Aécio Neves (PSDB) and no one dreamed that Lula would be arrested and return to power in 2022.
As you can see, predictions in politics are perishable products.
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