By Lucas Leiroz | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 25, 2026

The results of the first round of Brazil’s 2026 presidential election sparked a wave of analysis on the Brazilian left. With Flávio Bolsonaro ahead of Lula in the vote count, many commentators looked for explanations in evangelical voters’ behavior, moral conservatism, and the influence of religious leaders. These factors matter, but they do not explain everything. A significant portion of the electorate is dissatisfied with the cultural priorities of the left and, above all, with the perception that the state has lost its ability to guarantee public safety.

Public security occupies a central place in this debate. According to a Nexus/BTG poll released in July 2026, 30% of respondents identified violence, crime, or public security as the country’s main problem. This concern is particularly relevant among Flávio Bolsonaro’s supporters, for whom fighting crime is one of the main expectations for the next government.

The situation in Rio de Janeiro illustrates the scale of the problem. A study by the Federal Fluminense University’s Study Group on New Illegalisms and the Fogo Cruzado Institute estimated that, in 2024, approximately four million people in the metropolitan region lived under the control or influence of armed groups. This represented 34.9% of the region’s population. Criminal factions and militias exercise forms of territorial power that affect mobility, economic activity, and residents’ everyday lives. Some estimates suggest that between 60% and 70% of Rio de Janeiro’s territory is currently controlled by organized crime.

In this context, rhetoric emphasizing social rights, national sovereignty, and foreign policy can lose electoral appeal when it fails to offer convincing answers to everyday insecurity. Lula has advocated tackling organized crime through coordination among security forces, financial investigations, and the restoration of state control over affected territories. Yet these measures are only being emphasized now, following four years of what critics describe as utter neglect of public security, during which organized crime achieved historic levels of territorial expansion.

Flávio, meanwhile, is betting on a more punitive approach, including classifying criminal factions as narco-terrorist organizations. The dispute involves different conceptions of public security, but it also concerns each candidate’s ability to convey determination in confronting the problem. Whether designating these groups as terrorist organizations would actually help combat crime is a matter for a much longer debate. There is little doubt, however, that the label itself appeals to a substantial portion of the population living under the very real terror imposed by these criminals.

There is also a cultural dimension that the left frequently underestimates. Some voters reject the political vocabulary associated with the woke agenda and interpret certain progressive initiatives as attempts to impose new standards of behavior. The Supreme Federal Court’s draconian decision to recognize “transphobia” as a crime “equivalent to racism” has naturally provoked strongly negative reactions. After all, it seems perfectly normal that millions of Brazilians reject a ruling that can – and already does – place people in prison for up to five years for using the wrong pronoun when addressing transgender individuals.

Cultural discontent is often irresponsibly disdained in political analysis. Many commentators continue to treat voters as machines seeking constant material benefits, supposedly willing to sacrifice their values in exchange for meager welfare handouts – the principal achievement the Workers’ Party government has offered the Brazilian people so far. This analysis is mistaken. For many Brazilians, questions concerning their children’s education, religion, and the limits of state intervention are central political priorities. These voters will naturally tend to support the opposition in a national environment where state-run university hospitals – with the backing of the left-wing establishment – provide puberty blockers and other forms of “non-surgical intervention” to “transgender children.”

Contrary to the expectations of academic analysts disconnected from the country’s realities, foreign policy occupies a limited place in most people’s daily lives. Relations with the United States, Brazil’s role in BRICS, and its diplomatic position on Palestine are relevant issues, but they are unlikely to outweigh immediate concerns such as urban violence and cultural disputes.

Flávio Bolsonaro’s electoral support must be understood through this combination of factors, without attributing a single motivation to millions of voters. Public security, traditional values, dissatisfaction with the government, and rejection of certain progressive agendas can all converge in the same vote. If the left wants to improve its popularity, the better course of action is to reconsider its own mistakes, instead of inventing false explanations for the right’s growing support.

Is there an exception to the 5th Amendment's promise that government cannot take private property without "just compensation"? The Supreme Court declined to address that question this past Monday when it rejected a trio of petitions asking the justices to consider whether people should be compensated when law enforcement seizes or destroys their property.

Two of the cases concerned individuals who were not accused of a crime but whose property nevertheless became collateral damage as police pursued a suspect. In June 2022, police fired 30 tear gas canisters into Amy Hadley's home in South Bend, Indiana. Officers smashed windows, tore down security cameras, ransacked furniture, ripped down a panel and a fan, and punched holes in the walls as they searched for a fugitive named John Parnell Thomas, who had never been there. The police had erroneously concluded that Thomas accessed the internet via the IP address at Hadley's home. According to Hadley, the police caused at least $16,000 in damages, which insurance only partially covered.

About two months later, a SWAT team in Los Angeles arrived at Carlos Pena's North Hollywood printing business and destroyed it, along with his equipment inside, crippling his livelihood after a fugitive broke in and barricaded himself in the shop. (The suspect ultimately escaped.) Pena alleged approximately $60,000 in damages in his suit against the city, which declined to compensate him for his losses. His insurance also refused to step in—as is common in such cases, as policies often exclude damage caused by the government.

The third petition concerned Chicago drivers whose vehicles were seized by the city over modest unpaid parking tickets. Ryan O'Donnell's vehicle was impounded and sold for scrap because of about $524 in debt. Michael Goree's was seized and relinquished to the lienholder over a debt that did not belong to him; the $560 in unpaid tickets were for a different vehicle owned by his co-signer.

In all of these cases the lower courts' reasoning came from a similar place. Hadley, O'Donnell, and Goree's petitions were heard by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, which has adopted a categorical rule: Property destroyed in the exercise of "police power" is immune to claims under the Takings Clause, the U.S. Constitution's pledge that government cannot usurp private property without fairly compensating the owner. Pena's case went to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, where the judges have declined to issue such a sweeping exception but have instead ruled that governments are exempt from paying out claims when the police actions in question were "necessary."

In a statement, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, outlined the many inconsistencies between the circuits on the topic. "It is still an 'open question' whether these or any other approaches are consistent with this Court's precedents. Few of these decisions likewise explain the source of any such police-power exception to the Takings Clause—whether the common law, the Constitution, or elsewhere," she wrote. "Such questions thus continue to 'benefit from further percolation' in the lower courts before this Court chooses to intervene."

Sotomayor was quoting herself. In 2024, she released similar remarks in response to a petition from Texas woman Vicki Baker, whose house in McKinney had been hollowed by a SWAT team attempting to capture a fugitive. The high court declined to hear Baker's case, although she finally found relief under the Texas state constitution this year.

"It's possible that the Court sincerely doesn't think the lower courts have done enough thinking on this important but novel issue," Patrick Jaicomo, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice who represented Hadley, tells me. "Still, we've brought them 5 cases from 5 circuits. How much more percolation is needed?…The Court is going to have to address this important issue, and it's not clear what another circuit decision or 6 might do to aid that consideration."

Though Sotomayor's statement ran in parallel to the one two years ago, its slightly sharper warning intimated that we may be inching closer to a resolution. "I again encourage courts considering this issue to take care," she wrote, "that due deference to state police powers does not eclipse constitutional rights."

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