Free Republic

Far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro is heading for a sweeping victory in Brazil's presidential election, according to exit polls. The polls suggest Mr Bolsonaro has 56% of the votes and his rival from the left-wing Workers Party, Fernando Haddad, has 44%. Mr Bolsonaro campaigned on a promise to eradicate corruption and to drive down Brazil's high crime levels. The election campaign has been deeply divisive.

The far-right Brazilian populist Jair Bolsonaro has secured a resounding victory in the first-round of his country’s presidential election, but fallen just short of the majority required to avoid a second-round run-off. After a campaign as improbable and electrifying as any Brazilian telenovela – although infinitely more consequential for the future of one of the world’s largest and most diverse democracies – Bolsonaro secured 46.93% of votes - with 94% of all votes counted. second-placed candidate, the leftist Workers’ party Fernando Haddad, won 28% of the vote, according to Brazil’s superior electoral court, the TSE. Behind him came the Democratic...

He shocks many Western liberals, and some of his rhetoric on women and gays is certainly extreme. Still, Jair Bolsonaro's rise in the Brazilian polls isn't hard to understand. Because he is focused on three issues that now carry outsized concern in most Brazilian minds: reducing crime, countering corruption, and boosting the economy. Correspondingly, the simplest issue in Bolsonaro's favor is that which was in Donald Trump's favor in 2016: popular anger over a sense of wasted potential. It's an easy case to make in Brazil today. That nation has vast natural resources, a comparatively well-educated population, but also pathetic...