The polls open, Brazil called to choose between Bolsonaro and Lula

With more than 150 million Brazilians called to participate in the presidential elections this Sunday, from early in the morning voters began to approach the polling stations in order to choose one of the two possible candidates: the current president, the conservative Jair Bolsonaro, and the socialist Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva, who already occupied the Planalto Palace between 2003 and 2011.

The latest voting intention surveys published this week gave the candidate, Lula, a slight advantage over the current president, who arrives at the elections with an approval rating for his management of just 38%, according to data of Datafolha.

In the first round, the socialist finished ahead with 48.43% of the voteswhile the conservative leader passed the cut with 43.20%.

Both candidates are expected to cast their vote in the morning, just as they did in the first round, held on October 2. President Bolsonaro, candidate for the Libertal Party, will vote in Vila Militar, in the west of Rio de Janeiro; while Lula, leader of the Workers’ Party, will do so in the São Paulo municipality of São Bernardo do Campo.

Their respective votes, however, will be just two drops in the ocean that this year represents the Brazilian electorate, with 156,454,011 registered and authorized voters, according to data from the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), the largest electoral census in the history of the country.

However, the possibility of high abstention is worrying, as happened in the first round, in which 20.9% of voters – more than 20 million Brazilians – chose not to go to the polls.

That is why last Thursday, the president of the TSE, Judge Alexandre de Moraes, called on the population to speak out, and to do so “in peace.”

“We are going to reduce that abstention,” Moraes said in the last plenary session before the elections, according to reported Agency Brazil. “I ask all voters, just as they did in the first round, to appear – calmly, in peace – to elect their candidates.”

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