Nearly 20,000 Brazilians Voted in Malden and Framingham. They Backed Flávio Bolsonaro 72% to 28%, While Brazil Re-Elected Lula

Nearly 20,000 Brazilians cast ballots in Malden and Framingham on Sunday in Brazil's presidential election, in one of the largest Brazilian voting districts in the United States, WBUR reported Friday. They voted 72% to 28% for the far-right candidate, Flávio Bolsonaro, over the leftist incumbent, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Brazil as a whole went the other way. Lula won the election by 4.4 million votes, according to WBUR, in what the station described as an upset. Bolsonaro has refused to acknowledge the results, and a few days later he left for the United States, where he was reportedly granted a visa by the Trump administration after Brazilian authorities seized his passports.

The Massachusetts results reflect a community that is large and politically distinct. As many as 350,000 Brazilians live in Massachusetts, according to a recent study cited by WBUR, making them the state's largest immigrant group. They are also the group most affected by the Trump administration's immigration crackdown, accounting for two of every five people deported from Massachusetts.

Outside the polling place at the Salemwood School in Malden, the divisions were visible. A song praising Bolsonaro played across the street, where two men grilled beef skewers to raise money for a Christian missionary group. "Who do we support?" landscaper Samuel Dos Santos said. "You already know that!" Truck driver Jairo Alberto added: "Just by the fact that we're working, you already know who we support."

Sandra Marinho, a house cleaner from Everett who left Brazil nearly 20 years ago during Lula's first term, blamed him for the country's problems. "What has Lula done for Brazil? Absolutely nothing," she said in Portuguese. She said she came "to give a better life for my daughters," whom she left in Minas Gerais when they were 10 and 11 and still supports. "The public safety, the culture, the healthcare — all these things that Brazil does not offer Brazilians, the United States offers its immigrants," she said. "I love this country."

Lula supporters were outnumbered but vocal. "Many of them mix politics with religion — many of them are evangelicals," said Eva Cirelli of Andover. Ione Andrade of Burlington, 61, a party DJ and face painter who first came to the U.S. in the late 1980s, said many Brazilians here do not realize how progressive Massachusetts is. "They have no idea that Massachusetts is the most left state in the country," she said.

Liz McKenna, an instructor at the Harvard Kennedy School who studies political movements in Brazil and the U.S., told WBUR that by her analysis the share of Brazilians living in poverty fell from 50% in 2003 to 21% in 2024 and real per capita GDP rose 40% over the Lula era. But that record does not match many emigrants' experience. "Many Brazilians who came here felt that the narrative about [Lula's] economic regime as 'lifting millions out of poverty' (true) did not reflect their experience (also true)," she said in a text.

McKenna said many of Bolsonaro's most loyal supporters live in Massachusetts and Florida, which have the two largest Brazilian communities in the country. People who came to Boston during Brazil's economic crises "are still embedded in these church networks, and they still vote very heavily for Bolsonaro," she said, while more highly educated Brazilians, including students and researchers at Harvard, tend to support Lula and organized for him before the runoff.

The deportation campaign complicates loyalties. Adriano DaSilva of Woburn, a general contractor who voted for Bolsonaro, said he broadly supports the conservative agenda but opposes deporting workers and separating families. "That's a mark against [Trump]," he said, "but it doesn't take away from the right-wing policies that we want." He said ICE arrests and self-deportations have left him unable to hire painters, carpenters and plasterers. "We're losing work, plain and simple," he said.

DaSilva said the American dream is alive except for people in the country without legal status. "So the dream suddenly doesn't work for this person who entered or is here illegally," he said.

The story is part of WBUR's series "State of the 'Dream,'" profiling longtime Massachusetts immigrant communities.

Still unclear: how Bolsonaro's presence in the U.S. will affect Brazilian politics in Massachusetts, and how many of the state's Brazilian residents are eligible to vote in Tuesday's U.S. election.