Both nations plagued by political corruption that has eroded faith in democratic institutions

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The Nova América mall is a gleaming oasis in Rio de Janeiro’s chaotic, densely packed, blue-collar suburbs. It is in a stronghold of the far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, and its customers shed some light on why more Brazilians hold strongly populist views than citizens of any other country.

“There is a lot of stealing. Those in power have everything; the poor have nothing,” said Sylvia Chaves, a 42-year-old army lieutenant, standing outside a clothes shop. Raquel Brandão, 36, an events coordinator, concurred. “Society is divided by corruption,” she said. “Some get a lot, others little.”

Revealed: populists far more likely to believe in conspiracy theories Read more

Chaves and Brandão were among the 58 million Brazilians who voted for Bolsonaro last year – no great surprise given that the central plank of his campaign was tackling rampant corruption.

Bolsonaro received 65% of the vote in this district last October. And, according to Brandão: “Many people voted for him in the hope he can end this corruption.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Supporters of Jair Bolsonaro celebrate in Rio after he was elected president last year. Photograph: Léo Corrêa/AP

It is this seemingly bottomless corruption that has driven huge numbers of Brazilians into the arms of populism, whose central idea is that a nefarious elite is ruling in its own interest, to the detriment of the popular masses.

In an analysis of 19 big countries surveyed by the YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project in partnership with the Guardian, no nation had a higher percentage of populists than Brazil.

More than two in five Brazilians were identified as firm populists on the basis of answers to questions in the survey. That was roughly double the global average, according to the analysis.

Brazil was closely followed by South Africa, where 39% of people held strongly populist views. Both countries have been plagued by years of political corruption that have eroded faith not just in the political class but in democratic institutions, too.

Q&A What is the YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project? Show Hide The project is a new annual survey of global attitudes in 23 of the world's biggest countries, covering almost 5 billion people.

The 2019 survey canvassed 25,325 people online across much of Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia in February and March.

Questions about populist attitudes and convictions were inserted in order to derive a "populist cohort", and discover what this group of people think about major world issues from immigration to vaccination, social media and globalisation. The full methodology can be found here.

South Africa, which is holding elections next week, has been rocked by a series of massive scandals in recent years, which revealed potential fraud worth billions of dollars. Many centred on a family of businessmen alleged to have exerted improper influence on the former president, Jacob Zuma, and his close associates within the African National Congress (ANC), which has been in power since 1994. Zuma and the associates deny any wrongdoing, but he was forced out by Cyril Ramaphosa, who became president of South Africa in February last year.

Transparency International placed South Africa 73rd on its list of the cleanest countries, behind Belarus and Jamaica.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Protesters against corruption in Johannesburg last week. Photograph: Marco Longari/AFP/Getty Images

Recent electricity outages across the country are widely blamed on graft within the state generating company while other failures to deliver basic services to tens of millions are also seen as a consequence of official corruption.

A beneficiary of the widespread discontent in the forthcoming elections is expected to be the Economic Freedom Fighters, a populist far-left party whose “commander in chief” is Julius Malema, the 38-year-old former ANC youth leader.

Founded in 2013, the EFF has yet to make a major electoral breakthrough. In 2014, they got just over 6%. Alex Vines, director of the Africa programme at the Chatham House thinktank in London, believes they “are looking at perhaps 8%” in the coming polls.

The ANC is aware of the challenge it faces to win back voters who have switched to the EFF. Malema has said his former party was “dying”. Ebrahim Rasool, a senior ANC election strategist, said: “We are not dealing with just outraged, disillusioned young people but they have adopted the weapon of populism to bring onboard young people who are genuinely outraged.”

Similarly, in Brazil, distrust in politicians is “because there really is a corrupt elite”, said Renato Meirelles, founder of Locomotiva, a São Paulo research institute.

Frustrations began to boil over in 2013, as Brazil was gearing up to host the World Cup, when people took to the streets to protest against overspending on stadiums, failing public services and rampant corruption.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A demonstration against corruption in Niteroi, Brazil, in 2013. Photograph: Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty Images

One president – Dilma Rousseff – was impeached for breaking budget rules, in a controversial process driven by anger over an enormous corruption scandal at the state-run oil company Petrobras. Another, her predecessor Lula da Silva, was jailed over the scandal.

The YouGov research suggests Brazilian populist ideas are relatively common across the country.

In total, 84% of Brazilians, for example, either “tend to agree” or “strongly agree” that their government “is pretty much run by a few big interests looking out for themselves”. The figure is similar for both men and women, people of all ages, and voters for all the major parties.

The same is true of South Africa, which has the same proportion – 84% – of people on balance agreeing with the idea their government is run by a few self-interested powers.

While more than four in five Brazilians and South Africans concur their government is commanded by powerful interests looking out for themselves, other nations are not far behind. The figure is 73% in Spain, 69% in the US, 60% in Germany and 48% in Japan.

Those figures could go some way towards explaining the recent success, in such diverse democracies across the world, of politicians who cast themselves as outsiders intent on dethroning corrupt elites on behalf of the overlooked masses.

The YouGov survey enables a fine-grained look at the kinds of voters who are open to those kinds of messages.

Overall, the populists in the survey were more likely to believe globalisation had on balance been bad for their living standards, their economy and the cultural life of their country. They appeared more likely to be politically active, saying they had recently voted in elections or posted social media comments in support of a politician or party.

And whether they identified as being on the left or right, the survey suggests populists were more likely to back government regulation of banks, pharmaceuticals and tech companies.

Given populists often expect their leaders to enact a simplified “will of the people”, it is perhaps unsurprising that they also showed a strong appetite for systems of direct democracy that remove politicians from the picture.

Populists tended to say direct democracy, “where decisions are made by the general public voting directly on issues”, was preferable to electoral democracy, where decisions are made by elected national leaders. They believed direct democracy was more likely to deliver political stability, a strong economy and a happy society.

In Brazil and South Africa, like many of the other countries in the survey, populists were also marginally more likely to say they consumed news from platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and WhatsApp.

There is some evidence social media may explain the apparent connection between populist politics and conspiracy theories, which can make natural bedfellows.

In the Rio shopping mall, Yara Dantas, a 55-year-old teacher and Bolsonaro voter, attributed the president’s electoral success to his social media communication. “He won the election because he talks directly to us,” Dantas said. “We really admire this.”

But the tsunami of pro-Bolsonaro Facebook Live broadcasts, Twitter posts and viral WhatsApp messages also carried with them propaganda and false news stories.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bolsonaro campaigning in Brasilia before his election last year. Photograph: Evaristo Sa/AFP/Getty Images

Among the widely circulated fabrications that swirled during the campaign were conspiracy theories about leftwing political connections to paedophilia, and naked feminists – or “femi-nazis” – turning huge women’s demonstrations against Bolsonaro into sacrilegious orgies.

“The WhatsApp situation was very serious,” said Pablo Ortellado, a professor of public policy at the University of São Paulo, who monitored social media during the elections. “Nobody expected it would be used as the principal weapon.”

When a Brazilian newspaper investigation identified some of the companies paying for WhatsApp propaganda, Bolsonaro distanced himself from the controversy and rubbished the story as “fake news”. In doing so, he borrowed from the playbook of Donald Trump, another rightwing populist who came to power with the help of conspiracy-theory-infused social media.

• Additional reporting by Pamela Duncan and Seán Clarke