With the re-election of Dilma Rousseff as Brazil’s President, the important feature of the election is stability rather than change.

The political landscape for the 2014 Brazilian presidential elections was set in 2012 when the main candidates -Dilma Rousseff (PT), Minas Gerais Senator Aécio Neves (PSDB) and former Pernambuco Governor Eduardo Campos (PSB)- were informally put forward by their respective parties. Campos was presented as a third option in light of the polarisation between the PT and PSDB. Marina Silva, who joined the PSB after failing to establish her own party, suddenly became her party’s presidential candidate after an airplane crash killed Campos on 18 August.

When ballot boxes opened on 5 October, commentators were surprised that Rousseff was joined in the second round by Aécio Neves rather than Marina Silva, contrary to the predictions of pre-electoral polls. Marina Silva maintained her position: in 2010 she received 19% (almost 21 million votes) and in 2014, again in third place, she received 21%. The PT and PSDB candidates were separated by a difference of eight points (42% vs 34%) leaving the PT with a slight advantage for the second round of elections on 26 October.

The whole campaign was very polarised, as expected, with strong accusations by both sides about corruption in their respective parties. On the petistas side, Petrobras became a nightmare; to tucanos, past scandals came to light like skeletons in a closet.

Two aspects of the second round elections are noteworthy.

The first trend relates to a growing tendency towards “lulismo”. During Lula da Silva’s government, Lula’s figure supplanted the PT’s one as a vindicator of the poor and defender of the majority. The political hegemony created by the egocentric figure of Lula went beyond the Getúlio Vargas political behaviour as an intermediary of all of society’s conflicts. During the past few decades, Lula, Dilma and the PT party have advanced a narrative which describes a country split in half: a Brazil divided into poor and rich, North/North East against the other regions. It’s difficult to believe that this will change in a “new government” of the PT.

The second trend is the political apathy that took over the country, despite the “June Journeys” protest when thousands of Brazilians went to the streets in protest against the cost of the World Cup, lack of improvement to public services and the political system, among thousands of demands. They urban middle classes (most of these people are around 25 years old) protested for everything, what means that they protested for nothing concrete. During the years of Lula’s government, domestic consumption was stimulated but this policy dismantled society’s support for political themes. There is now something near to a sense of alienation from national politics amongst Brazil’s youth that borders on a general lack of faith in the political system.

The natural heir of this discontent, Marina Silva, was not able to accumulate enough force to promote a political solution to the current polarisation. Worst of all, in the second round Silva threw her support behind Neves, in a clear sign of political survival, going against what she had preached in seeking a “new politics”.

Neves, for his part, did not breathe new air into national politics beyond anti-PT sentiment. He campaigned on the idea that the current development model has been exhausted, and flirted with parts of the demands from the streets, but without assuming or repelling them formally. Neves became the candidate of “what’s new” but, like Rousseff, he did not discuss or offer new proposals for the country for 2015-2018. Working in his favour was the fact that the PT has built over time a solid antipathy in some sectors of society, not only among “the right” (due to aversion to social inclusion programs and the measures to address inequality of society) but interestingly also by sectors considered to be more on “the left”.

The economy is likely to live up to the pessimist predictions of the International Monetary Fund for a (non)growth rate of 0-3% this year. This fact suggests that the economic development model has been exhausted. The model is based on two pillars: the expansion of access for mass consumer goods and the production and exportation of manufactured agricultural and mineral goods. Both pillars are related: the popularisation of consumption was facilitated by the exchange rate appreciation, which in turn enabled higher prices for these goods.

Following the elections, looking at the polarised structure in the run up to the leadership and the composition of the new legislature, it’s possible to say that nothing has changed and nothing will change. The voting for the three main presidential candidates in 2014 is in no respect different than the one obtained four years ago. Days after Rousseff’s victory, André Singer, a respected political scientist from the University of São Paulo and former spokesman in Lula’s government, gave his pessimistic view.

The differences in discourse are merely rhetoric. At the end, the important feature of this election was (and is) stability and not the change that the candidates had promised to bring.

Fabrício H. Chagas Bastos is Professor of Contemporary International Relations at Grande Dourados Federal University (UFGD) and Associate Researcher at International Relations Research Centre at University of São Paulo (USP).