The aftermath of the first round of voting carried much apprehension and worry; for two weeks, there was a sense that never had a victory felt so much like a defeat – as if we had been blindsided once again and knocked down by reality. I had never really believed a win would be as straightforward as the opinion polls suggested. Nevertheless, I was shocked when the results from, say, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro started to come in; even after the four-year term of a disastrous administration that seemed to be self-evidently so, Bolsonarism proved to be much stronger than we thought. Many had laboured under the illusion that we were still living, essentially, in the same country that had elected four consecutive centre-left administrations, and everything would go back to the way it was – once this unpleasant interlude was over. That illusion was now shattered once and for all.