The campaign for the second round of the Brazilian presidential election ended on Saturday, October 29, with the two competitors sharing meetings in the two largest electoral colleges. Left-wing ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva gathered his supporters in the economic capital, São Paulo, while outgoing far-right president Jair Bolsonaro was in Belo Horizonte, capital of Minas Gerais. Sunday, 156 million voters must vote, after a campaign marked by tensions.
The two candidates have burned their last cartridges at the end of a marathon campaign. On Friday, they exchanged insults during a last televised debate at loggerheads (“ bandit », « imbalance “). The candidates accused each other of “ lie “, without exposing their projects for the continental-sized country of 215 million inhabitants. ” An anti-debate, without the slightest novelty that could change the situation “said political columnist Otavio Guedes on the Globonews channel.
After the long debate on TV on Friday evening, they left for a final lap on the eve of the election. On the one hand, Jair Bolsonaro has pushed hard in the state of Minas Gerais, the region where he thinks he can make a difference. Because in the past, the candidate who won in Minas Gerais, the second most populous state, won the election in all of Brazil, reports our correspondent in São Paulo, Martin Bernard. But in the first round Lula got there first.
Lula, for his part, went on a kind of health walk with his supporters on São Paulo’s main avenue, Paulista Avenue, where he would like to celebrate the victory on Sunday evening.
Lula has increased to six points (53%-47%), against four previously, his lead in the latest survey by the benchmark institute Datafolha, published Thursday, October 27. But the pollsters had been singled out after the first round, on October 2, for having completely underestimated the score of Jair Bolsonaro, who finally obtained 43%, behind Lula’s 48%.
► To read also: Presidential campaign in Brazil: in the working-class Vila Carioca district of São Paulo, voters are very divided
Extreme polarization with numerous incidents including murders
The final vote count could be tight on Sunday night and increase tension and the extreme polarization in the country, according to political scientist Renato Dolci. The campaign was peppered with false information, as well as many incidents and murders, that of a former elected member of Lula’s party, killed on Friday October 28.
The result will be very tight, which reflects a society divided into two blocks that compete on moral and family values. If Jair Bolsonaro is re-elected, he will listen less and less to his opponents, those who do not think like him. And we must not forget that we live in an era of digital populism, it is the permanent electoral campaign. We would therefore see a Bolsonaro government, which defends very radical ideas, in a permanent campaign. It would also be a government that would increasingly put forward a moralizing agenda, relying on conservative values. And this, at a level that we have not yet seen in Brazil. It is this prospect that scares me the most. To this must be added the fact that Congress is controlled by the Bolsonarists. All the Conservative MPs who have been elected are close to Bolsonaro. This Bolsonarist Congress could attack the balance of power, which would be very dangerous. But the president would face him with significant opposition and very vigilant media, he could not force his way either!
Political scientist Renato Dolci explains the consequences of a possible victory for Jair Bolsonaro
Threats of not recognizing the results?
About one in ten voters has not yet made their choice… this is the case of Raimundo, a retiree from São Paulo who does not yet know if he will vote, because differently for most voters, voting does not is not mandatory for retirees. One thing is certain: he will not vote for the outgoing president.
Nothing good comes out of Bolsonaro’s mouth. Frankly, a president like him, I have never seen. Imagine it’s someone posing in a video with kids holding toy guns. I’m 72 and I’ve never seen this. Lula is worth much more. My father-in-law living in a very precarious place, he had nothing. No water, no electricity, nothing to eat. Lula helped people like him a lot, thanks to social assistance, they could buy food, they were provided with drinking water. I know many who for the first time could afford a refrigerator and a television. No one has done as much as Lula, on the social level. And if he is elected, he could do them again. Me, for example, the only time in my life when I got an increase in my pension was under Lula.
Pensioner Raimundo is undecided whether he will vote or not
Jair Bolsonaro, who has long threatened not to recognize the verdict of the polls, and who received the support of former US President Donald Trump on Friday, apparently tempered his position after the debate. When asked if he would accept a possible defeat, he said: ” whoever has the most votes wins. It’s democracy “.
► Read also : Understanding Bolsonarism and its roots in Brazil