ON POLITICAL STRATEGY — OR, “FEELINGS DON’T CARE ABOUT YOUR FACTS”
Should Bolsonaro change his strategy to earn more voters?
DISCLAIMER: This text is just an attempt of analysis under the perspective of political persuasion. It’s not intended to debate ethics, proposal or facts.
As taught by Scott Adams (of Dilbert’s fame), one of the main factors which brings a person to vote for a given candidate is the identification that is created between both. Unlike it’s usually thought, it’s not the proposals on health, education, security, economy etc. This is not good or bad, it is just a fact of human psychology, says Adams.
It’s not to say that those are unimportant topics for the future of the country. It’s just that in the process of selecting a candidate, those topics acquire a secondary importance. Here is how it works: for any emotional reason, people “choose” a candidate. A posteriori, they create rational justifications to give support to that decision.

That’s why it’s not that easy for “low energy” candidates to earn voters: technical candidates (like Henrique Meirelles), candidates who speak in abbreviations (like Geraldo Alckmin), or candidates who come up with numbers (like Ciro Gomes). With them, remain only those who understand (or pretend to understand) what they are talking about. But the crowd, outside internet and away from this elitist-intellectual-mediatic bubble, is not so interested in what they are saying. Those types of politicians might even have success, but they don’t succeed to create a strong identification with the people, and, therefore, they have no charisma.
This is a major factor that made Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to get to where he got, in terms of coverage and organic activism. In the last decade, Brazilian people, mostly poor, have created a very strong identification with the character “Lula”: a guy who came out of nothing, from the middle of Northeast, lost a finger during work, have “fought for the workers” and placed himself against the fancy powerful men. And, of course, this character has also caused commotion inside the “enlightened” and “progressive” elite, throughout that typical elitist self-blame for being “way too privileged”. And the Workers Party (PT) knew exactly how to use this symbolism that was created around this character. Today, despite the facts, this symbol is what stands on the horizon of many Brazilians, even if worn out.
On the other hand, we have Jair Bolsonaro, former captain of Brazilian Army. By many reasons, such as a strong reaction against the political correctness, the Social Justice Warriors, the great concern with security, and an aversion against the establishment, PT and the post-modern leftist agenda, many people have created an identification with him. Either in the elite or in the crowd, regardless of color, gender and sexuality, people see in Bolsonaro a reasonably honest man (mainly when he is put beside traditional politicians from PT, MDB and PSDB), a patriot, humble and especially authentic man, who places himself against the deep state. They see him as an outsider, even though he might not be exactly that. Identification as a persuasion weapon is much stronger than any fact.
However, as Dilbert’s creator have also taught us, the most effective persuasion strategy is fear. It’s to plant the seed of fear deep inside people’s hearts and cultivate it day after day, by any means possible. It’s what was made with Lula until 2002 and it’s what has been made with Bolsonaro since he became popular. It’s the strategy that Hillary Clinton optimized in her campaign after hiring Robert Cialdini, the “Godzilla of persuasion”, by starting to attribute the adjective “dark” when referring to Donald Trump.

Therefore, there is a dialectic which surrounds those characters — Lula and Bolsonaro –, in which the identification of the people collides with the narratives of fear created against both. It’s (also) because of that, that an always grumpy and radical Lula from the 1980s have transformed himself in a “Lulinha Paz & Amor” in 2002, with the “Letter to the Brazilian People”, where he committed to the establishment (against the will of many old-school partisans) and, thereby, built his path to the presidency.
With Bolsonaro, this dialectic manifests itself so strongly that makes it harder to analyze the electoral situation, and it confuses most part of the traditional political analysts. We can see either specialists saying for a long time that Bolsonaro would “dehydrate” until October and never go to the second round, or other specialists saying that he could be elected already on the first round.
The identification of many Brazilians with the captain occurs largely because he talks about God, defends the family, acts strictly against “the bad guys”, and advocates against abortion, gun control and drug legalization. This is exactly the opposite of what our elite — producer and consumer of news –, expects from a presidential candidate. Astonished, the elite considers the ideas of the captain the most abject and outrageous as they can be, while the common people either don’t care, or even support them. Many look at the candidate and think: “This guy speaks my language”.

But to what extent will this strategy work? Could the persuasion by fear against the candidate promoted by the whole establishment fail to overcome the identification that he nourishes with the people? For this game is not made of “proposals”, like I said before. Many acquaintances of mine have basically the same opinion as Bolsonaro, but there is always that fear to be associated with the captain and, i.e., to be considered a priori bigoted racists, sexists and homophobes (which they are not). Also, there are those who truly believe that Bolsonaro is Hitler. And to stop Hitler getting into power, everything is worthwhile, isn’t it? This is fear in action, with all of its strength.

Finally, my point is: which is the best strategy for Bolsonaro to keep earning more voters? Should he begin to tone down, deconstruct the motives for people to fear him, and become more admissible to the “moderate” voters, or keep focusing on the identification of the masses (which has been working so far) and proceed with “let Bolsonaro be Bolsonaro”? Anyhow, until October we shall know the answer.
