Why some young Brazilians voters are abandoning Lula

SAO PAULO, June 24 - Ricardo de Lima Filho, a 34-year-old video game translator, has voted for left-wing presidential candidates in every election he can remember, including President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of the Workers Party in the 2022 runoff.

This year, however, he will go to the polls in October hoping to elect a right-wing president.

"I've lived most of my adult life under Workers Party governments," he said. But with the economy stuck in a lower gear, public safety backsliding, and corruption scandals in the news, he said, "I couldn't feel the improvement that I expected."

Lula counted on young voters, between the ages of 16 and 34, to win the 2022 election against far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro. But this time around, polls show the former union leader is struggling.

Overall, Lula remains popular and is widening his lead over his rivals. However, a June poll by Quaest, a Brazilian polling firm, showed that young adults were the only age group in which disapproval of Lula's government exceeded approval.

LEADING THE REGION

Young Brazilians are among the most right-wing in their cohort in Latin America, with 38% identifying as such in a 2024 survey done by a foundation linked to Germany's Social Democratic Party. And a December poll by AtlasIntel showed older generations were more likely to identify as left or center-left.

The conservative tilt is stronger among men, who were two percentage points more likely to identify on the right in that survey and have skewed toward conservative candidates in presidential polling.

The rise of the young male conservative is part of a global trend, with parallels in Europe, the United States and South Korea, for example.

But in Brazil, where Lula and his former chief of staff won five of the last six presidential races, the shift also reflects a generation that came of age associating the left with a string of economic disappointments over the past dozen years.

Right-wing presidential hopeful Renan Santos, 42, has capitalized on the frustration, drawing early support from disaffected young voters, although he resists calling them "conservative."

"They are anti-left. It's different," he said in an interview at the Sao Paulo studio where he shoots his daily posts on social media. "The left is the establishment."

'ASHAMED TO SAY'

At a May meeting in another corner of the city, young Workers Party and other progressive leaders met for some soul searching over how they had lost ground with so many young voters.

Participants ran through explanations, from possible bias of tech platforms to the combative language of social media. They workshopped policy ideas, such as shortening the workweek or how to adapt housing programs to young people's needs to connect with the zeitgeist.

"Are people ashamed of saying they are left-wing?" one young man asked the group.

Digging into the Quaest polling data, the firm's director, Felipe Nunes, told Reuters that the surveys of young Brazilians do not reflect more conservative ideology per se. For example, they largely support the expansion of public services such as expanded access to higher education.

Yet polls show a widespread frustration with the economic stagnation linked to recent leftist governments that struggled to keep up with rising expectations.

While the number of Brazilians with a university degree almost doubled in the last decade, according to government data, graduates' earnings did not grow as expected.

Inflation-adjusted income for university grads is still lower than in 2014. They still earn more than those with only high school education, but the gap has shrunk.

"Young people went to university ... and when they returned to the job market, they didn't see real economic result," Nunes said.

The search for answers has pushed many young voters toward the more market-oriented platforms of candidates on the right and center of the political spectrum, he added.

RENEWING RANKS

At an April demonstration on Sao Paulo's Avenida Paulista, 28-year-old journalism student John Vitor Lima and dozens of his peers gathered to protest a vast banking fraud scandal putting public pension funds at risk.

Most of the protesters were young men demanding an end to corruption and harsher penalties for criminals.

Organizing the demonstration was the right-wing party Missao, led by the presidential contender Santos. It was the second that Lima attended.

Santos has proposed making it easier to arrest suspected gang members and tying the use of federal funds allocated to political parties to the performance of their mayors.

"Our generation is not in positions of power," he said, reflecting on the appeal of the young conservative candidate. "Santos brings hope ... In general, people in positions of power are older."

In a May poll conducted by AtlasIntel, Santos captured a striking 36% of voters aged 16 to 24, outpacing both Lula and his main rival, Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro.

Despite his popularity with some young voters, Santos is still polling in single digits across the electorate. Still, his campaign is part of a years-long renewal among right-wing parties that has included some of the youngest federal lawmakers in Brasilia.

The top candidates in Brazil's presidential race reflect the same dynamic. Flavio Bolsonaro, drawing the most votes on the right, is 45 years old. Lula, 80, is Brazil's oldest president.

Earlier this year, a Workers Party representative said it was still reaching out to young voters, engaging them on issues like climate change, an issue that they warn the youth will feel the most, while reminding voters of Jair Bolsonaro's harmful legacy on the environment.

Lula has also empathized with youth frustration, saying in April he knows there is a perception of corruption, but he urged young voters to participate politically. "Even when you think no politician is good enough, don't give up on politics, get involved in politics."

Flavio Bolsonaro, meanwhile, has been posting videos urging young people to vote, making an appeal in one video to those "doing everything right, yet going nowhere." REUTERS