Brazil’s Lula and Bolsonaro court undecided voters in final debate before knife-edge vote

Flávio Bolsonaro apologised to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on the night of October 23 for mocking the Brazilian president’s missing finger, in a last televised showdown before the October 25 run-off. With only 2% of voters still undecided according to a latest Datafolha poll, the stakes of winning them over were high.

TV Globo’s broadcast from Rio de Janeiro, hosted by the country’s dominant network, was calmer than the bad-tempered encounter on TV Band last week. For much of the evening the candidates stuck to the format’s set topics, setting out rival plans on wages, crime, healthcare and farming. But hostilities resumed once moderators stepped back in the final segment.

The race could hardly be closer. Datafolha’s poll on October 22 gave Bolsonaro 47% and Lula 46%, within its margin of error of 2 percentage points, or 50% each counting only valid votes. Bolsonaro, the eldest son of convicted former president Jair Bolsonaro, came first in the first round earlier this month with 47.03% against 45.16% for Lula, but the gap has since closed.

The vote will decide whether the right-wing movement built by Jair Bolsonaro can return to power four years after Lula defeated him. The former president is in jail after being convicted of plotting a coup following that 2022 defeat to Lula. Markets have favoured his son, seeing him as more likely to curb public spending and pursue investor-friendly reforms. The Ibovespa index rose 7.7% to a record after the senator’s first-round lead.

The most combative moment came early. Turning to interest rates and household debt, the 45-year-old senator said Lula was taking money from the public “with nine fingers”. The epithet, widely used on the Brazilian right to deride the president, alludes to the finger Lula lost in a lathe accident as a teenage factory hand.

In the following segment, the 80-year-old leftist leader demanded an apology. “He will have to apologise. Because the working people are watching. Millions of workers suffer accidents due to employer irresponsibility,” Lula said. “I was underage and I worked at night.”

“Lula, if I offended you by calling you ‘nine fingers’, I truly apologise. I didn’t mean to offend you,” Bolsonaro replied. He immediately turned the tables, asking whether the president would say sorry to indebted Brazilians and to the homeless, whose numbers he claimed had nearly doubled during Lula’s current term.

Lula answered by calling his rival a “miliciano”. In Rio, the word denotes paramilitary gangs with police ties that dominate swathes of the city’s working-class districts. “I will not accept some rich guy, with a highly questionable political practice, calling me ‘nine fingers’,” the president said. Given the floor to reply, Bolsonaro let the accusation pass and switched topics. He has said he would designate the militias as narcoterrorist organisations.

Crime produced another painful exchange. Lula raised the case of Ana Clara, a five-year-old girl killed by a rifle bullet in Niterói in 2021. The military police officer accused of firing it was represented free of charge by Bolsonaro, who was already a senator. The girl’s mother attended the debate as one of Lula’s guests.

Addressing her directly, Bolsonaro confused her name with her daughter’s, according to Folha de S.Paulo and Estadão. “I am confident that it was not this police officer who fired that shot,” he said. The mother hit back, shouting from the audience that her daughter was dead.

On the economy, Lula leaned on his record, pointing to minimum wage rises that outpaced inflation and to falling hunger under his government. He repeatedly portrayed his opponent as out of his depth, comparing him to exam candidates who “can memorise things, but they can’t learn”.

Bolsonaro concentrated on grocery bills. He blamed Lula for expensive food and warned that the government’s tax overhaul would leave shoppers paying more. He accused the government of overspending, driving up inflation, debt and borrowing costs, but offered no detail on cuts. He denied he would target welfare or pensions and promised to raise the minimum wage above inflation.

Lula also challenged Bolsonaro over his past vote as a Rio state legislator against longer maternity leave. Bolsonaro admitted the vote had been wrong and said marriage and fatherhood had changed his view.

The final part of the debate, in which the two could question each other freely, reverted to the mudslinging of the TV Band debate. Lula raised Bolsonaro’s reported ties to Daniel Vorcaro, the jailed former owner of Banco Master, whose bank is at the centre of a fraud case. He also raised the senator’s links to the lawyer Willer Tomaz and the $24mn budget of “Dark Horse”, a biopic of Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro shot back by bringing up a pension fraud case and allegations concerning Lula’s son. He also cited a Veja magazine report that Vorcaro had bought a rare bottle of whisky as a gift for the president.

The barbs drew on allegations that have shadowed both campaigns. In May, leaked messages published by The Intercept Brasil showed the senator negotiating up to BRL134mn ($24mn) from Vorcaro to finance the film. He has called the money a private sponsorship and denied any exchange of favours. Federal police are also investigating him for suspected money laundering linked to Tomaz, which he denies. Earlier this week, piauí magazine alleged that in 2020 he was entertained on a speedboat in Brasília by executives of Precisa Medicamentos, then seeking to sell a Covid-19 vaccine to the government, and given a Rolex. Bolsonaro had not commented when the report was published.

Lula has vulnerabilities of his own. He spent 19 months in prison on corruption and money-laundering convictions that were later annulled. His eldest son, Fábio Luís Lula da Silva, is under federal police investigation over alleged influence peddling. He has also been drawn into a congressional inquiry into fraud at the INSS, the social security agency. He denies wrongdoing, and Lula has said he will not shield him. In June, Jaques Wagner, a close ally, quit as the Workers’ Party leader in the Senate after the Supreme Court accused him of accepting payments and an apartment worth more than $1mn for defending Banco Master’s interests in Congress. Wagner has said he will prove his innocence.

Earlier revelations dented the senator’s standing only briefly. After the film-funding disclosures, an AtlasIntel/Bloomberg survey showed Lula moving from narrowly behind to a lead of about seven points, before Bolsonaro recovered to top the first round. Analysts have argued that Brazil’s entrenched polarisation means scandals are more likely to keep disillusioned voters at home than to make them switch sides. Abstention reached 21% in the first round, the highest since 1998, even though voting is compulsory.

A focus group of 12 São Paulo voters, run by the Travessia institute for Estadão, suggested committed supporters on both sides were unmoved by the October 23 debate. Five of the six undecided participants, however, ended the night leaning towards Lula. Estadão pointed out that the exercise has no statistical validity and is not a voting-intention survey.

“Nobody said Lula did well. He didn’t win the debate. Flávio was the one who lost,” said Renato Dorgan, the political scientist who led the session. He attributed the shift mainly to Bolsonaro’s handling of the Ana Clara case and the ill-judged “nine fingers” remark.

With campaign spots on radio and television prohibited by law from October 24, both candidates turned to street rallies in Rio and São Paulo for their final push.

Beyond running Latin America’s largest economy, home to 214mn people, the victor will set Brazil’s course between the big powers. Bolsonaro is a Trump ally whose win would strengthen Washington’s hand in the region and cement US supremacy in the Western Hemisphere. Lula has championed closer ties with China, BRICS and the EU, keeping a cooler relationship with the US.