Brazil’s Shift: How the Rise of Entrepreneurship is Reshaping Politics
In the industrial city of Betim, Brazil, aspiring middle-class workers are shifting their political support from the left to the right as the desire to run their own businesses outgrows traditional factory labor and union protections, csmonitor.com reported on October 23, 2026. This demographic shift threatens the traditional base of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ahead of Sunday’s presidential runoff.
Guilherme De Souza Works at the Stellantis Factory
For nearly five decades, Betim embodied working-class aspirations in Brazil, underpinned by the leftist political movement of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Factories sprawl across the rolling hills of this industrial town, anchored by a historic Fiat plant that opened in 1976 and later became Stellantis in a 2021 merger. When local resident Guilherme de Souza recently landed a job in machine maintenance at the Stellantis automotive factory, it was far from his dream job.
Instead, he attends a night course with plans to become an entrepreneur running his own car repair business. Most importantly, he wants to work for himself. His attitude reveals a demographic shift away from the left, which built its success on promises of secure jobs and worker protections. Today, working-class Brazilians want not simply better jobs, but to be their own bosses. That modern notion of success threatens to reshape Brazil’s politics.
Rosana Pinheiro-Machado and the Rise of the Independent Micro-Entrepreneur
Starting out as a labor organizer in the 1970s, President Lula established his leftist platform on the aspirations of Brazil’s working people. Over the course of his three nonconsecutive presidential terms—he is running for his fourth—the realities for poor and middle-class Brazilians have dramatically changed. His Workers’ Party now seems out of touch with laborers whose ambitions have been shaped by earlier Lula initiatives that pulled millions out of poverty, recent economic slumps, and social media networks where motivational coaches champion upward mobility through merit and diligence.
Lula earned 3.3 million fewer votes in the first-round election than he did in the 2022 vote. Analysts state that support has been primarily lost among the country’s “C class,” which consists largely of urban, aspiring middle classes earning between 2,525 and 10,885 reais per month, or about $503 to $2,150.
When looking at the numbers, independent micro-entrepreneurs are the ones switching from the left to the right, according to Rosana Pinheiro-Machado, a professor of global studies at University College Dublin in Ireland. She explains that the rise of app-based gig labor and digital startups, fueled by the pandemic, sparked a labor transformation in Brazil that the Workers’ Party has struggled to match.
Flávio Bolsonaro and the Weekend Runoff Polls
Right-wing Flávio Bolsonaro is projected to earn 48% of the weekend’s runoff vote, according to an Ideia/Meio poll published on October 21, 2026. Lula polled with 46% of support. Among voters who view business ownership as a pathway to a better life, that margin stretches wider, with 62.3% backing Bolsonaro compared to 33.5% favoring Lula.
Lula’s first two terms in office, between 2003 and 2010, are remembered for welfare programs that pulled tens of millions of people out of poverty, granting them access to new consumer goods and new life goals. However, as the country faced an economic and political crisis in the mid-2010s, this ascendant middle class often remained on the margins of the formal labor market, aspiring to more but remaining frustrated, according to Dr. Pinheiro-Machado. Brazil currently has a historically large informal sector numbering nearly 39 million people.
Calls to bring back the policies from Lula’s early years and the rollout of broad social spending upon securing a third presidency in 2023 have failed to strike a chord with today’s contemporary working middle class.
George Sergio Rosa and the Jardim Teresópolis Small Business Boom
Home to nearly 500,000 residents, Betim features a bustling highway dividing its low-rise landscape, while robust industrial facilities provide jobs for tens of thousands of regular wage earners. Yet, the number of registered micro-entrepreneurs has exploded over the past decade. A total of 7,750 new micro-entrepreneurs registered in 2025 alone, bringing the local total close to 37,000 self-employed residents.
Small-business owners are saturated and want renovation, says George Sergio Rosa, president of the Minas Gerais chapter of G10 Favelas, a national social impact organization. Operating from a primrose-yellow headquarters in the Jardim Teresópolis neighborhood that mushroomed across the highway from the Fiat plant, G10 Favelas runs programs to help youth enter the workforce. It holds recruitment drives for firms like Stellantis and organizes courses for entrepreneurs to learn new skills, such as digital marketing.
Young people no longer see the appeal of a salaried job with fixed hours, Rosa reports. He hears regularly how the favela’s hundreds of small-business owners—from barbers to cooks—feel burdened by high taxes.
The Workers’ Party has always focused on the well-being of the worker, Rosa notes. Just last week, a landmark labor reform was approved by Congress and championed by the Lula government, shortening the workweek to 40 hours and increasing compulsory rest days without cutting salaries.
Alex Custodio and the 43 Million Aspiring Brazilian Entrepreneurs
Even on the factory floor, thousands of workers who benefited from federal government programs do not feel represented by Lula, says Alex Custodio, president of the metalworkers union for Betim and surrounding cities. That disconnect stems in part from the widespread desire among Brazilians to work for themselves.
Data from the most recent Global Entrepreneurship Monitor study indicates that 40% of Brazilians harbor ambitions of launching their own company, while 43 million intend to establish businesses over the next three years, positioning the nation as the second-largest entrepreneurial community globally, right behind India.
It has been 18 years of Workers’ Party governments, and workers just see more of the same, says Guilherme de Souza, the mechanic and aspiring entrepreneur who plans to vote for Bolsonaro. The far right has successfully tapped into this discontent by attacking welfare policies and extolling individual responsibility, which resonates with self-employed workers, Dr. Pinheiro-Machado observes.
Jackson Santos and the Pursuit of Dignity Online
Gig workers in Betim, such as motorcycle driver Jackson Santos, made the switch from formal employment in search of greater autonomy and better pay. If someone wants to keep working in a supermarket their entire life, that is their choice, Santos says, but the quality of life he aspires to includes traveling, seeing other countries, and having a family—goals he cannot achieve earning 3,000 reais, or about $595.
Posting online clips showing himself performing delivery tasks while dressed in a suit and tie has helped him gather hundreds of thousands of followers and earned him the moniker “motoboy elegante.”
A desire for respect and recognition underpins workers’ motivations for entrepreneurship. The Brazilian working class was one of the world’s most humiliated and marginalized, Dr. Pinheiro-Machado notes, explaining that behind the pursuit of online influence, material comfort, and wealth lies a fundamental need for dignity and visibility.
Betim native Jhonatan Barbosa Alves shares similar aspirations. Trained as an electrotechnician, he recently returned to driving Ubers until something better comes along while selling watches and perfume online and trying to launch a gaming channel on social media. Alves states that Bolsonaro is not his first choice as a leader, but he will vote for him against Lula, identifying with Bolsonaro’s defense of conservative values, talk of reassessing benefit payments, and support for entrepreneurs.
While the left struggles to signal what it can offer this new breed of worker today, Dr. Pinheiro-Machado concludes that even if Lula wins the election, the far right has won the dispute for hearts and minds.