00:05:59 · James Bosworth, Joe Weisenthal
[00:05:59] S2: He got his first cell phone. Lula had never had a smartphone before. Yes, they started Lula's Army, a WhatsApp group that had, I think, over 10 million people on it. Over 5% of Brazilian voters were on this WhatsApp group. And the day of the election, when there were various shenanigans on both sides, everybody plays dirty tricks, but certain mayors blocked the bus service. The WhatsApp group got into mode and started driving voters to the polls. Things like that really mattered. And Lula, who had never really understood social media, even though Brazil is the most online country potentially in the entire world, Lula had really, he nailed it during the debates. He hit these little 30-second clips that were perfect to share on social media. I don't know if he did it intentionally or not, but it was perfect. [00:06:41] S1: Some people just have that. You know, it's interesting what you say about this sort of like anti-incumbent bias working against Bolsonaro due to him having won the first round. I saw some people speculate, you know, in Universe B, where the U.S. is a different electoral system, whether Trump would have won in 2016 or had the first round been like, okay, let's narrow it down to the final two, kick off all the random third parties. Like, oh, like it's going to be Trump. Like, maybe not. You know, it's like, you never really know. But I could, I sort of get that, what you're saying. Like, it's sort of like resetting the expectations of who the president is. Right.
00:06:41 · Joe Weisenthal, James Bosworth, Tracy Alloway
[00:06:41] S1: Some people just have that. You know, it's interesting what you say about this sort of like anti-incumbent bias working against Bolsonaro due to him having won the first round. I saw some people speculate, you know, in Universe B, where the U.S. is a different electoral system, whether Trump would have won in 2016 or had the first round been like, okay, let's narrow it down to the final two, kick off all the random third parties. Like, oh, like it's going to be Trump. Like, maybe not. You know, it's like, you never really know. But I could, I sort of get that, what you're saying. Like, it's sort of like resetting the expectations of who the president is. Right. [00:07:19] S2: I mean, usually across two round elections, usually the first round winner wins. But occasionally, I mean, the reason you have the second round is so these things can happen. So voters can have that moment. And so the president can build a potential majority coalition for themselves. [00:07:31] S1: Yeah. [00:07:32] S0: Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't you have a Bolsonaro win as your base case? [00:07:36] S2: So I had Bolsonaro winning. The night before the election, I had Bolsonaro winning at about 64%. So prior to the first round, I was essentially coin flip. [00:07:44] S1: You thought it was 64% chance to win, not 64%.
00:07:44 · Joe Weisenthal, James Bosworth
[00:07:44] S1: You thought it was 64% chance to win, not 64%. [00:07:46] S2: To win, yes, yes. Exactly. 64% chance to win. And the prediction markets were at 80%. Yeah, they were. In fact, there was a moment where the prediction markets hit 87% for Bolsonaro. And so there's always this element of who got it less wrong becomes a real question in some of these prediction market things. And I know that this was a big miss for the prediction markets, right? I mean, you always wonder, was this the 20% shot that happened or did they miss? I will tell you, they missed. They were overconfident on this election. I missed. I wish I had been lower on the floppy odds. [00:08:16] S1: But you obviously thought that Lula had a real chance of winning. [00:08:19] S2: Oh, absolutely. You know, better than a third, right? They had a chance of winning. And the reasons were, I mean, you could see him slowly catching up in the polls and you could see his campaign just doing well, generally. Now, I can't base a prediction on vibes. All of the data, all of the polls said Flavio Bolsonaro was going to win. And so, I mean, based on the first in the first round data, it looked like Flavio winning. But, you know, you have to sort of factor in, OK, but he's catching up and the polls seem to be hurting together and correlated. And there were other issues as well. So that all went.
00:08:19 · James Bosworth, Tracy Alloway, Joe Weisenthal
[00:08:19] S2: Oh, absolutely. You know, better than a third, right? They had a chance of winning. And the reasons were, I mean, you could see him slowly catching up in the polls and you could see his campaign just doing well, generally. Now, I can't base a prediction on vibes. All of the data, all of the polls said Flavio Bolsonaro was going to win. And so, I mean, based on the first in the first round data, it looked like Flavio winning. But, you know, you have to sort of factor in, OK, but he's catching up and the polls seem to be hurting together and correlated. And there were other issues as well. So that all went. [00:08:48] S0: Into the model. How much of the miss by prediction markets and pollsters, I guess, had to do with, I guess, surprise voters actually turning out in the election? Because it seems like maybe a lot of people who weren't polled actually turned up and voted for Lula. [00:09:05] S2: So on one hand, it's really small numbers. The change in turnout from the first round to the second round was less than 2%. You had a slight shift in terms of non-voters, people who cast blank or invalidated ballots the first round. You had another 1% or 2%. But in Brazil, that's a couple million votes. And in an election won by 4 million votes, you know, a shift of 1% or 2% across those rounds really did make the difference. [00:09:27] S1: Wait, what's the deal with Bolsonaro's stepmom? [00:09:30] S2: Michelle? [00:09:31] S1: Yeah. What was the deal? I saw in your newsletter, you mentioned something she said or did that didn't help the race. What was that all about?
00:09:31 · Joe Weisenthal, James Bosworth, Tracy Alloway
[00:09:31] S1: Yeah. What was the deal? I saw in your newsletter, you mentioned something she said or did that didn't help the race. What was that all about? [00:09:36] S2: So early on, Michelle, who's a stepmom, Michelle Bolsonaro had, and she won a Senate seat, by the way, during this past election. Oh, good for her. But she and Flavio had a little fight and then they made up. And now she's considering changing parties potentially, which is also odd to leave the Bolsonaro party when her last name is Bolsonaro. But she and Flavio had this just spat in which it seemed like Flavio was not respecting her. And because Flavio... was already weak among women voters, this did not help the odds for his campaign. Across the whole campaign, he had setback after setback. It's actually impressive. He did as well as he did in the first round. But his campaign, he was also very professional. If you watched him in the debates, he was very well coached. He didn't answer the questions, but that's typical in a lot of debates across democracies. He was very well coached. He did not do poorly in the debates. [00:10:23] S0: Well, speaking of Bolsonaro's party, are you seeing like a fracturing there? Because I think he's rejecting the results of the election from the US where he now is. But meanwhile, his party has accepted the result, right? So like, His own party has accepted the result that he's rejecting. What does that mean?
00:10:23 · Tracy Alloway, James Bosworth
[00:10:23] S0: Well, speaking of Bolsonaro's party, are you seeing like a fracturing there? Because I think he's rejecting the results of the election from the US where he now is. But meanwhile, his party has accepted the result, right? So like, His own party has accepted the result that he's rejecting. What does that mean? [00:10:42] S2: The fracturing is not as bad as it was four years ago. I mean, four years ago, after Jair's attempted coup, there was a real fracture. And you saw a lot of centrist parties jump in and support Lula. It gave Lula big support for the first year of his presidency in this most recent term. This time, you do see it's not a fracturing, but it's a recognition, I think, that maybe the Bolsonaros shouldn't be the candidates in 2030, right? They're already playing this out and saying, we need to figure out a strategy because everybody knows that if the candidate had been Tarcísio de Freitas, who won the governor of Sao Paulo or any other right-wing candidate, they would have, that person would have defeated Lula. I feel convinced of it. Every Brazilian analyst feels convinced of it. So the question is, how do we avoid running the Bolsonaros in 2030 so that somebody else can run because that candidate will be a stronger candidate than anyone with the last name of Bolsonaro?