Ave Império: What if Brazil reformed in 1889?

[NotDavidSoslan]

In the 2020 Brazilian general election, the PSB was returned to power with a fairly static showing, losing 4 seats (mostly to the economically nationalist PNB) while making negligible gains in the popular vote.

Although the PDC had to deal with the growth of the far-right PNB as a populist alternative to the status quo, they still flipped five seats, retaining their longtime status as the official opposition to the PSB.

Prime Minister Flávio Dino managed to mostly unite the left during his premiership, leading to the United Left coalition losing 19 seats and falling to single digits of the popular vote. Polling for the 2025 general election is not favourable to them either.

The PNB did best in provinces with the highest concentration of evangelical voters, or in depressed working-class areas such as the ABC Paulista. They advocated for protectionism and a reindustrialisation program, and opposed COVID restrictions, appealing to working class Brazilians who felt they had been harmed by neoliberalism, free trade and lockdowns.

The 1940 general election focused on World War II, as Brazil was already a great power by then.

The ruling PSB, as well as the declining PL, supported the Allies, while the PR, PC and AIB were isolationists to varying degrees, the latter being a fascist party. Other issues included transportation (highways vs railways) and the construction of Brasília, which the PR, led by right-wing corporatist Getúlio Vargas, promised to audit.

The PSB won the general election due to the good economy and popularity of its social democratic policies, as well as the support of black people and trade unions for the Allies.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

The 1980 Brazilian general election followed international trends, with the neoliberal centre-right party defeating the governing centre-left one by a landslide, as happened in the United Kingdom two years before and in the United States a month later.

Ronald Reagan would be re-elected in 1984, but the Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher lost the 1983 general election to the Labour Party led by Tony Benn.

Paulo Maluf chaired the São Paulo Chamber of Commerce between 1964 and 1968 before being named president of the federal savings bank, an institution he revolutionized and gave it several surpluses; this allowed Maluf to be elected Mayor of São Paulo in 1972, where he defeated the PSB candidate by a landslide; as Mayor, Maluf built major public works, such as Minhocão and a new subway station, and cracked down on crime and drug use. In 1976, he was elected to the General Assembly for the PDC in a by-election, becoming a major advocate for neoliberalism and anti-communism, which became his administration's priorities.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

Leonel Brizola represented the same district in the Brazilian General Assembly as Trotskyist Plínio de Mello, who represented Noroeste Riograndense in the Chamber of Deputies between 1931 and 1935.

Mello was the leader of the Brazilian Socialist Workers' Party (Partido Socialista Proletário do Brasil, PSPB), the main party of the country's anti-Stalinist left during the early 1930s. The PSPB, composed of democratic socialists and Trotskyists, elected three other MPs: Vasco de Toledo, Valdemar Rikdal and João Vitaca.

In the 1935 general election, the PSPB was virtually wiped out, and it disbanded in 1945, before it could contest that year's general election. The Revolutionary Socialist Party (Partido Socialista Revolucionário, PSR) replaced it as the main Trotskyist party in Brazil.

The Noroeste Riograndense district was broken up in 1965, when the Chamber of Deputies was expanded to its present size of 513 MPs, and Brizola was reelected from a fraction of it centered around his birthplace of Carazinho. The district still exists today and is represented by a MP from the Christian Democratic Party.