There are only a few days left until Brazil's runoff election on October 25, with neither left-wing incumbent Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva nor right-wing populist Flavio Bolsonaro a clear favorite. While three polls from last week showed a razor-thin lead for Bolsonaro, the PoderData polling institute has now projected 50% voter backing for each candidate. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video This election could end up as close as the one held in 2022, when Lula narrowly beat Flavio Bolsonaro's father, Jair Messias Bolsonaro, with just 50.9% of the vote.
Jair Bolsonaro, incidentally, was later jailed for attempting a coup to hold onto power. His son, Flavio, surprisingly won the first round of voting on October 4 by securing 47% of the vote. Bolsonaro's right-wing bloc also won many additional seats in Congress, primarily at the expense of Brazil's centrist parties.
And in the week following the first round of voting, polls showed Bolsonaro commanding a lead of up to six percentage points. Yet last week, Lula managed to gain momentum through nationwide mass rallies and his dynamic social media presence. Bolsonaro, in contrast, had scaled back street campaigning in light of his strong poll numbers.
That turned out to be a mistake. Now he, too, is once more mobilizing supporters to stage major rallies across Brazil as the country readies for the runoff. The rivalry between Lula's left-wing camp and Bolsonaro's far-right bloc has shaped Brazilian politics for the past decade.
Jair Bolsonaro gained nationwide recognition during the 2016 impeachment proceedings against Lula's political protegee, then-President Dilma Rousseff. He went on to win the 2018 presidential election while Lula was serving a prison sentence on corruption charges. But when Lula's conviction was overturned, the former trade union leader staged a political comeback in 2022.
This polarization is responsible for the disappearance of centrist parties and a political alternative, or "third way," said political scientist Marco Aurelio Nogueira. "The divide between Lula and Bolsonarism has paralyzed Brazilian politics, and anything that didn't belong to one pole or the other has disappeared," Nogueira told DW. This polarization is fueled by social media, the expert added, saying that "platforms' algorithms thrive on conflict and reward excitement." Nogueira said Flavio Bolsonaro's calm demeanor could explain why he has a realistic chance of defeating Lula, unlike his father in 2022.
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