A simple but alarming question hung over Brazil’s election: Would President Jair Bolsonaro accept the results?
For months, Mr. Bolsonaro attacked Brazil’s electronic voting machines as rife with fraud — despite no credible evidence. He suggested that he would dispute any loss that showed signs of cheating. He tried to enlist Brazil’s military in his battle. And he told his tens of millions of supporters to prepare for a fight.
“If need be,” he said in a June speech, “we will go to war.”
One of the world’s largest democracies is now bracing for the possibility of its president refusing to step down because of fraud allegations that could be difficult to disprove.
Yet, according to interviews with dozens of Bolsonaro administration officials, military generals, federal judges, election authorities, members of Congress and foreign diplomats, the people in power in Brazil feel confident that while Mr. Bolsonaro could dispute the election’s results, he lacked the institutional support to stage a successful coup.
Instead, the officials worried about lasting damage to Brazil’s democratic institutions and about violence in the streets. Polls showed that three-quarters of Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters trusted the election systems a “little” or not at all.
“There will be a civil war,” said Kátia de Lima, 47, a store clerk at a rally for Mr. Bolsonaro this month. “And the armed forces are going to be on our side.”
In the days leading up to Sunday’s vote, Mr. Bolsonaro continued to cast doubt on the security of the voting machines, saying “it’s a question that has been growing steadily, with more and more people doubting it.”
He and his allies also began to claim “fraud” in other areas, accusing Brazil’s elections chief of unfairly censoring conservative views online and complaining that his opponent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, had received far more airtime on radio stations, which would have violated Brazilian election rules.
“This is very serious, it’s fraud. It interferes with the results of elections,” he told reporters on Wednesday. “I am once again a victim.”
But on Friday, in an interview after the final debate, Mr. Bolsonaro changed his tune. He was asked directly whether he would accept the vote’s results, regardless of outcome.
“There’s no doubt,” he said. “Whoever gets more votes, takes it. That’s democracy.”
He has said similar things in the past, and then again claimed fraud.
