Brazil bucks regional trend as economic pessimism deepens
Brazil bucked the trend across most of Latin America, with economic pessimism now higher than in 2023, according to a survey covering 16 countries in the region.
In 2023, 35% of Brazilians said the economy had worsened from the previous year. In 2026, when asked to compare conditions with 2025, that share surged to 59%.
Besides Brazil, only Mexico recorded a deterioration in perceptions of the economy, and by a much smaller margin. In 2023, 40% of Mexicans believed the economy had worsened from the previous year. This year, 42% said conditions had deteriorated.
In the other 14 countries surveyed, respondents reported improved economic conditions between 2023 and 2026.
Argentina recorded the largest improvement in perceptions. In 2023, amid hyperinflation, at least 86% said conditions were worse than the previous year. In 2026, with prices still rising rapidly but more slowly, 65% reported a deterioration from 2025.
The data is part of “Pulse of Democracy 2026,” an AmericasBarometer report published by the Center for Global Democracy and Vanderbilt University’s Latin American Public Opinion Project in the U.S. state of Tennessee.
The Kellogg Institute for International Studies, which is affiliated with the University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs in Indiana, also participates in the project.
The findings from this year’s survey will be presented on Thursday (22) at a seminar hosted by the University of São Paulo’s (USP) Department of Political Science. The results have already been presented at institutions in the United States and Spain.
AmericasBarometer was launched in 2004 and focuses primarily on how people in the region perceive democracy.
This year’s edition included 26,282 interviews with residents of 21 countries, from the United States to Argentina.
Not all countries have previous data to compare with this year’s responses. For the survey of perceptions of economic conditions in 2023 and 2026, responses were analyzed from 16 countries whose participants addressed the issue in both rounds.
Democratic gains
In measuring respondents’ attitudes toward democracy, AmericasBarometer detected an improvement this year.
Since 2016, the surveys have shown relatively low levels of support for democracy, ranging from 58% to 61%—the lowest readings since the project began in 2004. This year, however, average support rose to 65% across 18 Latin American countries.
Colombia, for example, saw a sharp increase in public support for democratic values. In 2023, 51% of respondents said they supported democracy, compared with 63% in 2026. In Uruguay, support rose from 75% in 2023 to 86% this year.
Brazil was in the middle of the pack, with support increasing more modestly. The share rose from 64% in 2023 to 68% in 2026.
Peru had the lowest level of public support for democracy, slipping from 51% in 2023 to 50% in 2026.
Overall, the trend is clearly upward.
“Support for democracy reflects positive changes in people’s experiences with crime, corruption, and economic well-being. On average, these factors have improved across Latin America in recent years,” the authors of “Pulse of Democracy 2026” write.
Robert Vidigal, a member of the academic team led by political science professor Noam Lupu, director of Vanderbilt’s Center for Global Democracy, explains that the survey indicates that people who were victims of crime in the previous year show less support for democracy.
The same is true of people who were pressured by public officials to pay bribes, whose household income declined, or who struggled to provide food for their families.
“Our conclusion is that support for democracy has increased, but that support is associated with improved security, less corruption, higher household income, and food security. This means that if people support democracy only because of what it delivers, rather than because of democratic values themselves, that support is not strong. It is conditional,” Vidigal says.
In Brazil, economic pessimism has increased. Although homicides have declined year after year, they remain at very high levels, preventing much of the population from feeling safer, according to Vidigal. After a decade in the United States, where he completed his doctorate and postdoctoral studies, he is now a professor at the University of Brasília (UnB).
These factors could partly explain why support for democracy increased far less in Brazil than in several other countries in the region.
Discussing the overall rise in support for democracy, Vidigal says he sees no clear connection between the result and the recent wave of election victories by right-wing candidates across the region.
He notes that the share of voters identifying as right-wing in the countries surveyed rose from 30% to 36% between 2023 and 2026, but still represents a minority of the political spectrum.
Brazil and El Salvador are the exceptions. In the AmericasBarometer survey, 46% of Brazilians identified as right-wing in 2023, compared with 50% in 2026. “Those four points can swing an election,” Vidigal says.
Translation: Todd Harkin
