Elections in Brazil | Seven days before the vote, a victory for Lula in the 1st round seems possible

(Rio de Janeiro) One week before the presidential election, Brazil is entering the home stretch of an ultrapolarized electoral campaign that boils down to a merciless duel between Jair Bolsonaro and Lula, whose election in the first round seems possible.

If 11 candidates line up at the start, it is the fight between the former left-wing president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (47% of voting intentions according to the latest Datafolha poll) and the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro (33 %) which captures the attention.

“We need to talk to the undecided and those who are considering not going to vote,” Lula said at a rally on Sunday in front of thousands of supporters at the Portela samba school in Rio.

“Let everything go back to the way it was”

It is with consistency that opinion polls have for months awarded a 3^e mandate to lead the first power in Latin America to Lula, president from 2003 to 2010 and leader of the Workers’ Party (PT, left).

“Lula’s government was very good: my children were able to graduate from university, I was able to buy a car myself. I want him back because I would like everything to go back to the way it was,” Sandra Chaves, a 60-year-old woman who came to hear Lula at the Portela samba school in Rio, told AFP on Sunday.

The former steelworker had left power with stratospheric approval rates (87%), before experiencing disgrace in prison for corruption (2018-2019) and being prevented from representing himself. His election, at age 76, would mark a remarkable comeback.

It has a dynamic. “The polls say that there is a real possibility that Lula will win in the first round” of October 2, notes Fernanda Magnotta, analyst at the FAAP foundation, in Sao Paulo.

Lula could benefit from the “useful vote” if “the voters of less competitive candidates such as Ciro Gomes migrate to him”, she explains, about the center-left candidate, 3^e in the polls (7%) ahead of Simone Tebet (center right, 5%).

The much-talked-about “useful vote” has become the dominant theme of Lula’s campaign.

For Carolina Brigido, columnist at the UOL news site, “the typical attitude of the Brazilian voter is to wait until the date of the election approaches to vote for the favorite”.

In recent days, Lula has surfed on a wave of support: ex-president Fernando Henrique Cardoso asked Brazilians to vote “for democracy” and his ex-minister of the Environment Marina Silva also joined him after a long quarrel.

Left-wing politicians and intellectuals in Latin America called on Ciro Gomes to step down to facilitate Lula’s victory.

” It can be dangerous “

But on Friday, Jair Bolsonaro, 67, of the Liberal Party (PL), assured during a rally in Minas Gerais (south-east): “We will win at 1^er round “.

On Telegram, Bolsonarist networks are campaigning to explain that if their champion is not elected on October 2, it is because the election will have been fraudulent.

The fear of a Brazilian version of the assault on the Capitol in the United States is on everyone’s mind.

“It can be dangerous,” says M.^me Magnotta, “Bolsonaro will most likely invoke electoral fraud, like Donald Trump, this will galvanize his supporters”.

Because the ex-captain of the Army can count on battalions of supporters ready for anything. He himself has several times violently attacked the institutions of the young Brazilian democracy, such as the Supreme Court, and led a virulent campaign against electronic ballot boxes, which would promote “fraud”.

But suddenly lowering his tone, this unpredictable president also declared that if he lost, he would retire from politics.

It is therefore impossible to predict the sequence of events on the evening of the 1^er round.

“Thief, incompetent”

Bolsonaro and Lula’s campaign was marked more by personal attacks – “thief”, “incompetent” – than by the presentation of programs.

The daily O Globo called on Saturday Lula to propose “a coherent economic project”, because “if he wins, no one knows how he will govern”.

The candidates criss-crossed the territory of Brazil and held countless rallies wearing bulletproof vests.

The theme of the environment and the climate, in this country sheltering the Amazon, has fallen by the wayside, unlike hunger, inflation or corruption, concerns of the majority of the 214 million Brazilians.

To cast a wide net, Lula tried to seduce the evangelicals who constitute the base of Jair Bolsonaro’s electorate with agribusiness and pro-weapons.

He also chose to run for the very moderate ex-governor of Sao Paulo Geraldo Alckmin, of the center right, in order to reassure the markets which view his election with apprehension.

Mr. Bolsonaro, for his part, is trying unsuccessfully to seduce a female electorate who flees him mainly for his sexist remarks and has plowed the Nordeste, stronghold of Lula, without much effect either, according to the polls.

False information is surging like never before on social networks. They are also widely relayed by the presidential candidates themselves, on television, and even on the UN platform last Tuesday by Jair Bolsonaro.

The coming week will see the sworn enemies throw their last forces into battle, with large rallies and, on Thursday, a highly anticipated televised debate, where, unlike Saturday, Lula is expected to be present.