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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 8, 2024

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A better comparison would be Bolsonaro in 2018, who was IIRC behind in polls but cinched a Victory after the assassination attempt.

Hard to say in his case, it wasn’t an immediate boost (he was at around 26% before and immediately after) but he rose to the low 30s several weeks later and then won a higher percentage in the actual election. It also happened only a few days after Lula was barred, so there were a bunch of other factors in play as well that arguably explained why Bolsonaro rapidly increased in support in through late Sept and early October.

Brazil is not really embedded in the Western media sphere/memetic pond, though. I'd be more inclined to compare with Fico, where the media barely even mustered disapproval, and instead the reaction was all "he kind of had it coming" and "what if this makes more people support his pro-Putin agenda". The subsequent EU election did not really go in his favour, either

Fico's assassination didn't happen during a national election campaign. You could argue that it happened close to European elections cycle, at least, but the European elections have their own logic due to low voting rates and aren't treated as a "real" election nearly to the same degree as national elections are.