Why Young Brazilians Are Turning Away from Lula

By Manuela Andreoni and Andre Romani

SAO PAULO, June 24 (Reuters) — 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 backing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in the 2022 runoff. This year, however, he plans to cast his ballot for a right-wing candidate in the October polls.

“I’ve spent 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 dominating headlines, he added, “I couldn’t feel the improvement that I expected.”

Lula relied heavily on voters aged 16 to 34 to defeat far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro in 2022. But polls now indicate the veteran leftist is losing his grip on that demographic. While Lula remains popular overall and is widening his lead over rivals, a June survey by Brazilian polling firm Quaest showed that young adults were the only age group where disapproval of his government outpaces approval.

LEADING THE REGION

Young Brazilians rank among the most right-leaning in Latin America, with 38% identifying as conservative in a 2024 survey by a foundation tied to Germany’s Social Democratic Party. A December AtlasIntel poll further found that older generations were more likely to identify as left or center-left. The conservative tilt is particularly pronounced among men, who in that survey were two percentage points more likely to place themselves on the right and have gravitated toward conservative candidates in presidential polling.

This rise of the young male conservative mirrors a global trend seen in Europe, the United States, and South Korea, among other places. But in Brazil, where Lula and his former chief of staff have 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 tapped into that frustration, drawing early support from disaffected young voters — though he resists calling them “conservative.” “They are anti-left. It’s different,” he said in an interview at his Sao Paulo studio, where he shoots daily social media posts. “The left is the establishment.”

‘ASHAMED TO SAY’

At a May gathering in another corner of the city, young Workers Party and other progressive leaders held a soul-searching session on how they had lost ground with so many young voters. Participants ran through explanations, from possible bias in tech platforms to the combative language of social media. They workshopped policy ideas — such as shortening the workweek or adapting housing programs to young people’s needs — to better connect with the zeitgeist. “Are people ashamed of saying they are left-wing?” one young man asked the group.

Digging into the Quaest data, the firm’s director, Felipe Nunes, told Reuters that the surveys of young Brazilians do not reflect a more conservative ideology per se. For instance, most still support expanding public services like access to higher education. Yet polls show widespread frustration with the economic stagnation linked to recent leftist governments that struggled to keep pace with rising expectations.

While the number of Brazilians with a university degree nearly doubled over the past decade, according to government data, graduates’ earnings did not grow as expected. Inflation-adjusted income for university graduates remains 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 results,” Nunes said. This search for answers, he added, has pushed many young voters toward the more market-oriented platforms of candidates on the right and center of the political spectrum.

RENEWING RANKS

At an April demonstration on Sao Paulo’s Avenida Paulista, 28-year-old journalism student John Vitor Lima joined dozens of peers protesting a vast banking fraud scandal that put public pension funds at risk. Most of the protesters were young men demanding an end to corruption and harsher penalties for criminals. The demonstration was organized by the right-wing party Missao, led by presidential contender Santos — the second such protest Lima had attended.

Santos has proposed making it easier to arrest suspected gang members and tying federal funds allocated to political parties to the performance of their mayors. “Our generation is not in positions of power,” Lima 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 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 produced 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 the party was still reaching out to young voters, engaging them on issues like climate change — an issue where the youth will feel the greatest impact — while reminding voters of Jair Bolsonaro’s harmful environmental legacy.

Lula has also empathized with youth frustration, saying in April that he knows there is a perception of corruption, but he urged young voters to stay politically engaged. “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.”

(Reporting by Manuela Andreoni and Andre Romani; Additional reporting by Lisandra Paraguassu in Brasilia; Editing by Brad Haynes and Aurora Ellis)