Brazil’s two most sensible presidential candidates will face off in a runoff after neither won enough help to win an outright election on Sunday to decide whether the country sends a leftist back to the head of the world’s fourth-largest democracy or keeps the far-right incumbent in office. .
With 99. 5% of the vote in Sunday’s election, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won 48. 3% and President Jair Bolsonaro 43. 3%. Nine other candidates were also running, but they have nothing to do with Bolsonaro and da Silva.
The narrowness of the result came as a surprise, as pre-election polls had given da Silva a decisive lead. The latest Datafolha poll on Saturday found 50% to 36% merit for da Silva. It surveyed 12,800 people, with a margin of error of 2 percentage points.
“This narrow difference between Lula and Bolsonaro was not foreseen,” said Nara Pavão, a political science professor at the Federal University of Pernambuco.
Carlos Melo, a professor of political science at Insper University in Sao Paulo, said: “It’s too early to go too far, but this election shows that Bolsonaro’s victory in 2018 was not a setback. “
Bolsonaro outperformed in Brazil’s southeast region, which includes the populous states of Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais, according to Rafael Cortez, who oversees politics at consulting firm Tendencias Consultoria.
Bolsonaro outperformed in Brazil’s southeast region, which includes the populous states of Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais, according to Rafael Cortez, who oversees politics at consulting firm Tendencias Consultoria.
“The polls haven’t captured that growth,” Cortez said.
Bolsonaro’s tenure has been marred by incendiary rhetoric of democratic institutions, widely criticized handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the worst deforestation of the Amazon rainforest in 15 years.
But he has built a committed base by defending conservative values, pushing back opponents of political correctness, and presenting himself as the country’s protector of left-wing policies that he says infringe on individual freedoms and produce economic turmoil.
While voting the previous Sunday, Marley Melo, a 53-year-old shopkeeper from the capital, Brasilia, wore the yellow of the Brazilian flag, which Bolsonaro and his supporters co-opted for the protests. Melo said he would vote for Bolsonaro, who lived up to his expectations, and it doesn’t look like polls are following him.
“Polls can be manipulated. They are all owned by interests,” he said.
A slow economic recovery has yet to reach the poor, with 33 million Brazilians suffering from hunger despite high social benefits. A political turn to the left.
Bolsonaro has questioned the reliability of not only opinion polls, but also Brazil’s electronic voting machines. Analysts worry it may have laid the groundwork for rejecting the results.
At one point, Bolsonaro claimed to have evidence of fraud, but never presented any, even after the electoral authority set a deadline to do so. Recently, on September 18, he said that if he does not win in the first round, everything will have passed. be “abnormal. “
Da Silva, 76, was once a metallurgist who rose from poverty to president and is credited with implementing a sweeping welfare program during his 2003-2010 tenure that helped draw tens of millions of people into the middle class.
But he is also remembered for his administration’s involvement in major corruption scandals involving politicians and executives.
Da Silva’s own convictions for corruption and money laundering landed him in 19 months in prison, he from the 2018 presidential race that polls indicated he was leading in opposition to Bolsonaro. The Supreme Court then overturned da Silva’s convictions on the grounds that the sentence was biased. and in collusion with prosecutors.
Nadja Oliveira, 59, said she voted for da Silva and even attended his rallies, but since 2018 she has been voting for Bolsonaro.
“Unfortunately, the Workers’ Party has let us down. It promised to be different,” she in Brasilia.
Others, like Marialva Pereira, are more lenient. She would vote for the former president for the first time since 2002.
“I didn’t like the scandals of his first administration, I never voted for the Workers’ Party again. Now I will, because I think he was unjustly imprisoned and because Bolsonaro is such a bad president that he makes everyone better,” Pereira said. 47.
Speaking after voting in Sao Bernardo do Campo, the production center in the state of Sao Paulo where he was a union leader, da Silva recalled that 4 years ago he was in prison and unable to vote.
Bolsonaro grew up in a lower-middle-class family circle before joining the military. He turned to politics after being forced to leave the military for blatantly pushing for higher military salaries. During his seven terms as a marginal lawmaker in the cramped space of Congress, he expressed nostalgia for the country’s two decades of military dictatorship.
His proposals for the armed forces have raised fears that his imaginable rejection of electoral effects could be supported by the most sensible bosses.
On Saturday, Bolsonaro shared social media posts from right-wing foreign politicians, adding former U. S. President Donald Trump who called on Brazilians to vote for him. Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed gratitude for the strengthening of bilateral and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. He also congratulated him.
After voting Sunday morning, Bolsonaro told reporters that “clean elections will have to be respected” and that the first circular would be decisive. When asked if he would respect the results, he gave a thumbs up and walked away.
Leda Wasem, 68, had no doubt that Bolsonaro would not only be re-elected. Wearing a national soccer team jersey at a polling station in central Curitiba, the real estate agent said there can be only one explanation for da Silva’s imaginable victory: fraud.
“I wouldn’t. Where I work, where I go every day, I don’t see a single user supporting Lula,” he said.