00:11:51 · Joe Weisenthal, James Bosworth
[00:11:51] S1: I have a question, and this is something I know nothing about. It's not even really related to the election specifically. In fact, it's one of those things you read an article about every once in a while and forget. After Brazil, they did badly in the World Cup this year, and I saw a bunch of people on social media complaining or tweeting, like, oh, Brazil hasn't been good at soccer ever since the Catholic population of the country has declined. these evangelicals can't play soccer. This is just tweets that I saw. Can you talk a little bit about the sort of like politics and the rise, like the historical rise? I mostly associate Latin American countries with Catholicism, but I know these are like dated takes and that across Latin America, there's been a pretty big rise in like American style, evangelical Christianity, et cetera. Can you talk a little bit about who that demographic is? is like that shift, that wave, et cetera. [00:12:44] S2: And it's hard because the evangelicals also correlate somewhat more with rural voters in certain areas. The urban voters, as occurs in the United States in some ways. Right. But the evangelical rise in Brazil has definitely created a divide inside of the electorate. And you saw it every poll. There's not really exit polls in the same way we have in the U.S., but every poll in Brazil showed that the evangelical community largely voted for Bolsonaro and the Catholic community largely voted for Lula. But as evangelicals and Catholics are getting closer, close to parity in Brazil.
00:12:44 · James Bosworth, Joe Weisenthal
[00:12:44] S2: And it's hard because the evangelicals also correlate somewhat more with rural voters in certain areas. The urban voters, as occurs in the United States in some ways. Right. But the evangelical rise in Brazil has definitely created a divide inside of the electorate. And you saw it every poll. There's not really exit polls in the same way we have in the U.S., but every poll in Brazil showed that the evangelical community largely voted for Bolsonaro and the Catholic community largely voted for Lula. But as evangelicals and Catholics are getting closer, close to parity in Brazil. [00:13:15] S1: What has driven that, though? What is the long-term structural driver of the growth of evangelical Christianity across Latin America? [00:13:24] S2: To self-define, they're evangelical. They are constantly recruiting. They're self-promoters, Joe. And the Catholic Church, I think, has fallen behind on certain aspects of that. I think the other aspect of this is, there's elements of the Catholic Church, in the United States and in Latin America that are quite conservative, small C conservative in terms of how they view social policy. And Lula's coalition is much more small L liberal in the sense of they will support gay marriage. And I think that divide has caused the Catholic Church to have some drop in Latin America and in Brazil while the evangelical community has taken advantage of that.
00:13:24 · James Bosworth, Tracy Alloway, Joe Weisenthal
[00:13:24] S2: To self-define, they're evangelical. They are constantly recruiting. They're self-promoters, Joe. And the Catholic Church, I think, has fallen behind on certain aspects of that. I think the other aspect of this is, there's elements of the Catholic Church, in the United States and in Latin America that are quite conservative, small C conservative in terms of how they view social policy. And Lula's coalition is much more small L liberal in the sense of they will support gay marriage. And I think that divide has caused the Catholic Church to have some drop in Latin America and in Brazil while the evangelical community has taken advantage of that. [00:14:04] S0: The last time we had you on this podcast, you talked about an orange wave or the idea of a bunch of Latin American leaders sort of aligning themselves with Trump and striking deals and all of that. With the surprise result in Brazil, does that mean that the orange wave has crested, I guess, or is Brazil an exception? [00:14:25] S2: It's a great question. Everyone's watching Argentina next year to find out what the answer to that is. So there's sort of two questions here, right? One is this idea that there are a bunch of pro-Trump leaders who have won. And whether that was because there's been a shift to the right or just a pendulum in an anti-incumbent environment, I tend to be the latter explanation. Trump was going around saying he was nine for nine in elections recently. He just pulled that number out. [00:14:48] S1: Of the air.
00:14:48 · Joe Weisenthal, James Bosworth, Tracy Alloway
[00:14:48] S1: Of the air. [00:14:49] S2: But it's relatively close to how he had done prior to Brazil. There's still going to be for the next two years an orange shift in the sense that you have this element of Every Latin American leader, right, left, center, must respond to Trump. He forces them to respond, right? So even though Lula has won this election and the election did not go Trump's way and Trump is now trying to back away a bit from Bolsonaro, you have Lula da Silva having to work with Trump, having to respond to Trump, having to deal with tariffs. You have Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico having to do the same. Everyone has to respond to Trump, whether or not they agree with him. And that's still going to define the following two years until Trump leaves office in January, 2029. [00:15:29] S1: How much has the Iran war specifically flipped the sign, so to speak, about the value of being good friends with Trump in Latin America? [00:15:41] S2: So it really hasn't impacted– Latin American leaders are not responding to Trump's Iran war directly. [00:15:50] S0: Mm-hmm. [00:15:51] S2: At the same time, the Iran war has driven up oil prices and fuel costs around the region, which is just bad for incumbents generally. [00:15:59] S0: Oh, I see. [00:16:00] S2: When you have higher fuel costs or higher inflation in Latin America, every incumbent is going to suffer. And that's what you've seen in Chile and Colombia and Peru.
00:16:00 · James Bosworth, Joe Weisenthal
[00:16:00] S2: When you have higher fuel costs or higher inflation in Latin America, every incumbent is going to suffer. And that's what you've seen in Chile and Colombia and Peru. [00:16:07] S1: But it's just inflation. There's not... Because you don't think it goes a little bit further where it's like, yeah, here's this guy that you went to the White House and you were buddy-buddy with him. And this war that he started... which almost no one around the world except for the United States and Israel really care about, has caused inflation to get to rise. That hasn't created a political penalty, in your view, for politicians who made the choice to be friends with Trump? [00:16:35] S2: It doesn't seem to have mattered in any of the polls I have seen. What you do see are people are angry at inflation. But people aren't making the big logical leap necessarily. But all elections are local and local incumbents get blamed for inflation. Therefore, higher gas prices whether it's caused by the Iran war or something else, get blamed on the incumbent. Now, one interesting twist for Brazil, Brazil is very much in commodity exporting economy. If there have been higher commodity prices over the last six months, they're exporting oil, they're exporting soy. They have benefited in some ways from the Iran war. I mean, certainly the Caribbean and Central America have been hit hard. Brazil, it's sort of net effect is sort of a wash actually. And that may have helped Lula, though it's going to be a long time until we really are able to look at the data to understand that.
00:16:35 · James Bosworth, Tracy Alloway, Joe Weisenthal
[00:16:35] S2: It doesn't seem to have mattered in any of the polls I have seen. What you do see are people are angry at inflation. But people aren't making the big logical leap necessarily. But all elections are local and local incumbents get blamed for inflation. Therefore, higher gas prices whether it's caused by the Iran war or something else, get blamed on the incumbent. Now, one interesting twist for Brazil, Brazil is very much in commodity exporting economy. If there have been higher commodity prices over the last six months, they're exporting oil, they're exporting soy. They have benefited in some ways from the Iran war. I mean, certainly the Caribbean and Central America have been hit hard. Brazil, it's sort of net effect is sort of a wash actually. And that may have helped Lula, though it's going to be a long time until we really are able to look at the data to understand that. [00:17:20] S0: Should we talk Venezuela? [00:17:21] S2: Yeah, yeah. All right. [00:17:23] S0: So going over to Venezuela, we have Machado who's come back. And now people are talking a little bit, a tiny bit about the potential to have elections over there. And I saw on Polymarket there's like an 8% chance being priced. [00:17:37] S1: Of an election. [00:17:38] S0: Of an election by the end of the year, which is fairly soon now. It's November. That's true. You're a super forecaster. What number would you put on it?