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Brazil’s Most Divided Town Shows the Nation’s Shift to the Right
Deep in cattle country, voter sentiments in an evangelical stronghold help explain why the country’s leftist president is the underdog in Sunday’s election.
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By Adam B. Ellick and Seth Kugel
Adam B. Ellick is the Brazil bureau chief for The Times based in São Paulo. He and Seth Kugel reported this story from Nanuque, Brazil.
Oct. 23, 2026Updated 7:38 a.m. ET
It felt like doomsday for the Brazilian left. On Oct. 4, Flávio Bolsonaro, the right-wing presidential candidate, outperformed polls and edged ahead of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a leftist.
The narrow margin was not enough to avoid a runoff on Sunday between the two candidates, but it was plenty to set off hand-wringing and soul-searching across progressive bubbles in big cities like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, and a reorganization in Mr. Lula’s campaign.
A visit to Nanuque, a cattle-raising, churchgoing town 500 miles north of Rio de Janeiro, where crowds turn out on foot for an annual march for Jesus and on horseback for the nation’s independence day, offers clues to Mr. Lula’s lackluster showing and Mr. Bolsonaro’s rise.
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The town of 35,000 sits in the bellwether state of Minas Gerais, which has backed the winner in every presidential election since 1988, when democracy returned to Brazil after a military dictatorship.
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Source: The New York Times · Adam B. Ellick, Seth Kugel
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