Brazil entered the final stretch of a deeply polarized presidential race Monday after an inconclusive first voting round put far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro in an unexpectedly strong position.
Bolsonaro, 67, garnered 43 percent of Sunday’s first-round votes compared to 48 percent for leftist frontrunner Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva – a five-point difference that polls had predicted would be a much larger gap of 14 points.
Ex-president Lula, 76, had appeared to be within arm’s reach of taking the election in the first round with more than 50 percent of the vote – but the race now heads to a October 30 runoff.
Not only Bolsonaro surpassed expectations; many allies of his “God, country and family” brand of conservative politics also performed better than poll predictions in congressional and gubernatorial races.
It signaled enthusiasm for the far-right leader and his policies despite Bolsonaro’s controversial four-year tenure, marked by a shocking pandemic death toll blamed in part on his Covid-skeptic approach, surging destruction of the Amazon rainforest, and a sharp rise in Brazilians living in hunger.
The Sao Paulo Stock Exchange welcomed the first-round results in Latin America’s largest economy with a rise of more than four percent Monday morning.
Both men declared themselves ready for the final campaign to attract the vote of some nine million Brazilians who cast their ballot for minority candidates – none of whom managed to break through five percent of support -and 31 million others who did not vote at all.
Lula, who wasted no time convening his campaign team for a strategy meeting on Monday, said: “We will have to convince Brazilian society of what we are proposing.”
