We live, to a greater or lesser degree, under the logic of an ultra-fast temporality. Digital technologies promote changes on a scale never seen before, in the most varied dimensions, from production processes to behavioral logics.
In this dizzying context and precarious perception of their experiences, it is essential to observe the design that the movement of sociability has been scratching on the ground of history.
Thus, invites us to see beyond the “dust” that the digitized rush spreads, often obscuring our vision. In “The Divided Country”, he presents aspects of the Brazilian political scene from 2002 to 2022, within the framework of six presidential elections, revealing a Brazil undergoing profound transformation.
What many perceive as just a sensation or suspicion of news appears with crystal clear factual/statistical definition, the result of robust research, under the concern of a scientist with unique expertise and brilliant formulation.
Jairo highlights that Brazilian politics has undergone major changes, highlighting these transformations throughout five chapters, always based on official data from the Superior Electoral Court () and the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (), in addition to opinion polls.
In the first session, dedicated to demographic changes, he demonstrates that, in the voting, the percentage of young people declined, the number of women increased and the educational level of the population grew. “In 2002, people with low education represented 70% of the electorate and, in 2022, only 40%; this means that winning over this public, previously decisive for winning an election, today has a much smaller weight on the result.”
The author then addresses voter turnout. “The data shows that there are significant differences between the different demographic groups. Women turn out more than men; voters with higher education turn out more than those who only completed primary education. As expected, groups that are not obliged to vote — illiterates and people aged 70 or over — went to the polls in a smaller proportion.”
In the next part, the professor examines “voting for right-wing and right-wing candidates, relating sex, age, education and color/race to voting behavior.” The main contribution of this chapter is “to reveal how the color/race division played a fundamental role in dividing PT and Bolsonaro voters in the 2018 and 2022 disputes”, he highlights.
Chapter four is dedicated to themes that have been mobilizing the national political debate with increasing intensity. In this section, Jairo investigates how “religion, moral values, punitive views and positions on public security were linked to voting”.
It also shows the shift of evangelicals towards the right, and how they became one of the pillars of support for Bolsonaro in the 2018 and 2022 elections. It analyzes “the division of the electorate between conservatives, moderates and progressives, highlighting differences by religion, education and age”. It examines “support for punitive measures, such as reducing the age of criminal responsibility and the death penalty, but also the limits of this agenda, since extreme proposals […] are rejected by the majority.”
Another issue that has been mobilizing discussions, debates and campaigns in a relevant way, polarization, is addressed in the final chapter. “During the time that PT and PSDB competed in the second round, polarization was relatively low. In 2018, Bolsonaro’s entry boosted polarization concentrated on the right-wing camp – he managed to increase his popularity and rejection of the PT. In 2022, polarization shifted to the left: a significant part of the electorate that evaluated the PT positively began to intensively reject the opponent.”
Regarding these most pressing topics, considered respectively in chapters four and five, Jairo highlights crucial intricacies of the national political scene: “The conservatism index that I constituted reveals a more complex electorate than the generic label of ‘conservative country’ suggests. […] The relationship between moral values and voting is not uniform.”
Regarding polarization, the professor problematizes: “Brazilian polarization can be more episodic, personalized and potentially reversible than that of consolidated democracies. The speed with which it has intensified in a few years raises doubts about its durability in contexts of leadership renewal. In other words: how much of this division derives from the strength of the figures of Bolsonaro – and how much will survive in their absence?”.
The researcher notes, in the midst of socioeconomic, political-cultural and institutional transformations, a decisive change in the scenario of successive changes that we have experienced: the Brazilian way of communicating. From the prevalence of mass communication to the era of networks, “the way of receiving news and following campaigns has changed radically”, he notes at the beginning of the book.
At the end of the work, Jairo highlights: “The Brazil that elected Lula in 2022 was not the same one that elected him in 2002. The six elections analyzed in this book show that slow demographic changes can have rapid political effects when combined with political realignment and affective polarization. Understanding these transformations does not resolve debates about the future of Brazilian democracy, but it offers an empirically grounded starting point for these discussions.”
And here we can establish a “dialogue” with Paul Valéry, reinforcing the invitation to read Jairo Nicolau’s indispensable book: perhaps “history does not give much room for prediction, but, associated with the independence of the spirit, it can help us see better”.
