Lula aims to pull off a miracle by mobilizing abstainers to defeat Bolsonaro

Lula, who was born in 1945 in a small town in the interior of the state of Pernambuco, defied the odds by surviving hunger and disease as a baby — a fate that befell so many of his compatriots in those same circumstances. Now he dreams of defying the odds, and history, once again. Never since Brazil restored democracy in 1985 has anyone who finished second in the first round of the presidential election gone on to win the final vote. President Lula da Silva, who on Sunday secured 45% of the vote compared to Flávio Bolsonaro’s 47%, is devising a strategy to attract centrist voters and mobilize the masses of abstainers, with a special focus on those aged over 70. He has three weeks to make what now sounds like nothing short of a miracle a reality.

As of the age of 70, voting is no longer mandatory in Brazil but becomes optional. More than half of people embrace this and stay home on election days. In 2022, abstention in this age group reached nearly 60% of registered voters. What the statistics show was also evident on Sunday at the polling places. Among the dozens of people who went to vote mid-morning at the polling station set up on the modern campus of the Pontifical Catholic University in the Consolação neighborhood of São Paulo, very few were elderly.

The exception was a woman who slowly got out of a car and leaned on her son to walk. He politely declined an interview but did say he planned to vote for Lula: “So that [Donald Trump] doesn’t meddle in Brazil’s affairs.” The banner of sovereignty raised by the Brazilian president since Washington punished the country with high trade tariffs has become one of the major issues of the campaign.

The latest Datafolha poll before the election showed that Lula had an 11-point lead over Bolsonaro among older voters, which explains the president’s interest in fishing for votes in that demographic. He already tried this in the final stretch of the first-round campaign, when, in his last interview before the vote — with the streaming channel Flow — he addressed that segment of the population: “Don’t think that just because you’re 70 years old you shouldn’t vote because the law allows you not to. Brazil didn’t stop just because you turned 70, and your needs didn’t stop either. Because you have children, you have grandchildren, you have great-grandchildren. So go out and vote for what you want for your children, for your grandchildren. Go, get up, and vote,” Lula said. “Do as I do, you know? Don’t let old age make you complacent. We have to overcome old age by facing it head-on, don’t we?”

After the age of 80, having the president’s iron constitution is the exception rather than the rule among his compatriots. Among the tens of thousands of people who took part in the “red tide” in support of Lula last Saturday in downtown São Paulo, young people stood out and the elderly were few and far between, though they did not go unnoticed. A gray-haired woman proudly held up a sign that read: “Lula voter since 1989.” That year, when the Berlin Wall fell, the labor union leader was running for president for the first time. Some twenty-somethings, who weren’t even born back then, asked her if they could take a selfie with her.

The atmosphere of cautious optimism that had prevailed among supporters of the Workers’ Party (PT) has vanished following the defeat at the polls. On Monday, in the aftermath of the election, Lula had not been seen in public. The PT, which is witnessing the consolidation of Bolsonarism as a second major force in Brazilian politics, is exploring strategies for a comeback. Its president, Edinho Silva, explained on Monday that in this phase of the campaign, President Lula will engage in direct confrontation with his rival, the far-right Bolsonaro.

“The runoff is a whole new election; we’re very clear on that. It involves a direct clash of visions, in which Flávio Bolsonaro will face off against President Lula,” Silva explained in an interview with Globo. And with great optimism, given the results and reports of missteps in the PT’s presidential campaign, he added: “We’re extremely confident heading into this showdown, because we know the vision for the country that Flávio Bolsonaro represents.”

On election night, Lula offered a preview of that idea by launching a direct attack on Bolsonaro Jr., mentioning “the family’s sordid history” and the candidate’s own ties to the underworld, “to organized crime and the murders in Rio de Janeiro.”

It remains to be seen whether the presidential candidates will agree to a live televised debate. “Lula is eager to participate in the debates. I don’t know how many invitations will come, but as far as he’s able, he’ll attend as many as he can,” according to his party’s president.

In the first round, neither of the candidates accepted the two opportunities offered to them by the respective networks. Lula’s argument was that it would be an ambush by everyone against him, as he was the only leftist facing the rest, who leaned to the right. Bolsonaro argued that he would only participate if Lula did. Thus, one after the other, the electorate was left without the great opportunity to see the frontrunners go head-to-head live and compare their plans and platforms.

Circumstances are pushing Lula to go on the offensive, while Bolsonaro will try to play it safe — as Brazilian analysts put it, using a soccer analogy. In other words, he’ll entrench himself in his lead, without making too many moves to avoid any mistakes, while waiting for his opponent to do so instead.

A few days ago, Lula spoke disparagingly of candidate Bolsonaro before hundreds of business leaders whom he was trying to convince that the choice was actually quite simple. “If you had to choose between me and a genie…” Now that the votes have been counted, he trails the senator by 1.8 points.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition