More than 120 million Brazilians were voting Sunday in a polarized election that could decide whether the country returns a leftist to the helm or whether the world’s fourth-largest democracy keeps its far-right leader in office for four more years.
The duel, which began with the opening of the polls at 8:00 a.m. in Brasilia, pitted the current president, Jair Bolsonaro, against his political nemesis, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. There were nine other candidates, but their support lagged far behind those of Bolsonaro and Lula.
Recent opinion polls gave Lula a wide lead. The latest Datafolha poll published on Saturday showed that 50% of those consulted who planned to vote for a candidate said they would opt for Lula, compared to 36% for Bolsonaro. The firm interviewed 12,800 people, with a margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points.
Agatha de Carvalho, 24, arrived at the polling station in Rocinha, a working-class neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro, before it opened, hoping to vote before going to work, only to find that about 100 people they were already in line. She said that she would vote for Lula because Bolsonaro “is terrible.”
“A lot of people died because of him, during the pandemic. If he hadn’t done what he did, some of those deaths could have been prevented,” he said.
Bolsonaro’s term has been distinguished by his provocative rhetoric, his pressure on democratic institutions, his criticized handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the worst deforestation in the Amazon rainforest in 15 years.
But the president has built a loyal base with his defense of traditional family values, his rejection of political correctness and presenting himself as a protector of the nation against leftist policies that erode personal freedom and cause economic instability.
Also in Rocinha, Manuel Pintoadinho, a 65-year-old metal worker, said he voted for Bolsonaro and denied that the president is to blame for the economic problems.
“The pandemic ruined everything, inflation is through the roof, that’s not his fault,” Pintoadinho said.
The slow economic recovery has yet to reach the poor and 33 million Brazilians are going hungry despite increased social benefits. Like several of its Latin American neighbors grappling with high inflation and large numbers of people excluded from formal employment, Brazil is considering a shift to the left.
Gustavo Petro in Colombia, Gabriel Boric in Chile and Pedro Castillo in Peru are some of the leftist leaders who have recently come to power in the region.
There is a possibility that Lula wins in the first round, without the need to contest a ballot on October 30. For that to happen, it would need more than 50% of the valid votes, which excludes blank or spoiled votes. Brazil has more than 150 million potential voters and voting is compulsory, but the abstention rate can reach 20%.
A clear victory would raise expectations about how the president reacts to the count, as he has repeatedly questioned the reliability not only of polls, but of electronic voting machines. Analysts fear that he has laid the groundwork to reject the results. At one point, Bolsonaro claimed to have proof of fraud, but never presented any, even after the electoral authority set a deadline for him to do so. On September 18, he said that if he didn’t win in the first round, something must be “abnormal.”
The two favorites have core support groups: evangelicals and white men for Bolsonaro, and women, minorities and the poor for Lula.
Lula, 76, will vote in the state of Sao Paulo, where he was a metalworker and union leader. He rose from poverty to become president and is credited with creating a massive entitlement program during his 2003-2010 term that helped bring tens of millions of people into the middle class.
But he is also remembered for his government’s involvement in wide-ranging corruption scandals involving politicians and business executives.
Lula’s own convictions for corruption and money laundering earned him 19 months in prison, which kept him out of the 2018 presidential campaign that polls show he was leading against Bolsonaro. The Supreme Court later overturned Lula’s conviction on the grounds that the judge had not been impartial and conspired with the prosecution.
Marialva Santos Pereira, 47, said she would vote for Lula for the first time since 2002.
“I didn’t like the scandals in his first government and he stopped voting for the Workers’ Party. But now I am going to vote for them, because I believe that Lula was unjustly imprisoned and because Bolsonaro is such a bad president that all the others seem better.”
After voting in São Bernardo do Campo, the manufacturing center in São Paulo state where he was a union leader, Lula recalled that four years ago he was in prison and could not vote.
“I want to try to return normality to the country, make it a country that once again takes care of its citizens,” Lula told reporters.
Bolsonaro grew up in a humble family before joining the army. He later entered politics after being expelled from the army due to his explicit pressure to raise the salary of the military. During his seven terms as a minority parliamentarian in the lower house of Congress, he often expressed his nostalgia for the two decades of military dictatorship in the country.
His gestures to the armed forces have raised concerns that his possible rejection of the election results may be supported by high-ranking officials.
Typically, the role of the military in elections is limited to transporting voting machines to isolated communities and reinforcing security in violent areas. But Bolsonaro suggested this year that the army should do a parallel count of the votes.
Although the idea did not materialize, the Ministry of Defense said it would check the results of 380 voting centers in Brazil. Any citizen or entity can do the same, consulting a count available in each voting center after the polls close and on the Internet.
After voting in Rio de Janeiro and wearing a shirt with the colors of the Brazilian flag, Bolsonaro told reporters that fair elections must be respected and that the first round will be decisive. When asked if he would respect the results, he gave a thumbs up and left.
Because voting is done electronically, preliminary results are often available within minutes, with final results a few hours later. This year, all voting centers will close at 5:00 p.m. Brasilia, regardless of the time zones in which they are located.
Connect with the Voice of America! Subscribe to our channel Youtube and turn on notifications, or follow us on social networks: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
