Lula and Bolsonaro technically tied in first poll ahead of presidential runoff vote

Bazilian senator and presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro starts the runoff race with an advantage for the October 25 second round. A Datafolha poll, the first since Brazilians voted last Sunday, gives him 52% of valid votes. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is four points behind, at 48%. That gap lies outside the margin of error, which is two points either way.

In the first round the eldest son of former president Jair Bolsonaro caused a surprise and, contrary to polls, finished ahead of the veteran leader of the Workers’ Party. He won 47% of valid votes, compared with Lula’s 45.1%. The victory was bolstered by strong gains for deputies from the Liberal Party in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate.

The mood of optimism is evident in the far-right candidate’s campaign team, which is already talking about amending the Constitution to “redemocratize” Brazil and extending the presidential term from four to five years while banning re-election. Of the rivals Bolsonaro faced in the first round — all right-wing and who together won 8% of the vote — so far the only one to explicitly back the far-right has been Ronaldo Caiado, the former governor of Goiás. The natural move, however, is for those candidates’ voters to migrate to his ticket in the second round in order to defeat Lula.

For the president, a comeback is extremely difficult. He will have to focus above all on convincing the more than 33 million Brazilians who did not vote last Sunday to turn out; more than 20% of the electorate. In recent days Lula has devoted himself to internal meetings to redefine strategy. A central pillar is strengthening his presence on social media, where the extreme right overwhelmingly dominates.

One who moves like a fish in water online is former deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro, who on Thursday promoted an online meeting between his brother Flávio and Colombian president Abelardo de la Espriella. Eduardo has ambitions of becoming Brazil’s next foreign minister, but Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered Thursday that his Brazilian passport be revoked and that he begin serving his sentence — in June he was handed four years in prison for coercion of the judiciary and the window to appeal has already closed.

The Supreme Court convicted him for having maneuvered from the United States to interfere in the Brazilian judiciary by urging Trump to impose sanctions on Brazilian judges and tariffs on Brazilian products in an attempt to halt the trial against his father, who was likewise sentenced to 27 years in prison over an attempted coup. Nonetheless, it is very unlikely Eduardo will end up behind bars. He continues to live with his family in the United States and is counting on his brother to issue a pardon if he becomes president. The other major pardon anticipated in that instance is that of the clan’s patriarch.

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