Max Castle

"He favours the privatisation of all Brazil’s state-owned companies and 'brutal' simplification of taxes. Mr Bolsonaro proposes to slash the number of ministries from 29 to 15, and to put generals in charge of some of them."

... "Mr Bolsonaro’s answer to crime is, in effect, to kill more criminals ..." -- Still waiting for The Economist to get to the downside.

the guy that should be getting some more sympathy would be the former São Paulo state governor, Alckmin. he's managed to ignore popular politics in the last 20 years, set up the best police force in the country (São Paulo is the safest state)...

...and got the state with the only working economy in the whole country.

how much of that was the work of alckmin or just the inherent demographics of são paulo?

I don't know. High Italian population.