With so few undecided voters, the Workers’ Party strategy is focused on the roughly 33 million Brazilians who did not vote in the first round Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva led a large rally on São Paulo’s Avenida Paulista on Sunday to relaunch his campaign two weeks before the October 25 runoff, in which he trails Senator Flávio Bolsonaro. “This country cannot lose its democracy,” he told a largely young crowd.
The first Datafolha poll since the first round, published on Thursday, gives Bolsonaro 49% of voting intentions and Lula 45%; in valid votes, 52% to 48%. The pollster considers it a statistical tie at the limit of the margin of error. Only 1% say they are undecided. Some 46% of respondents say they would never vote for Lula, and 43% reject Bolsonaro. In the first round, the Liberal Party candidate won 47.03% of valid votes and Lula 45.16%, according to the Superior Electoral Court’s final count.
With so few undecided voters, the Workers’ Party strategy is focused on the roughly 33 million Brazilians who did not vote in the first round. The campaign has stepped up its social media presence with testimonies from beneficiaries of social programmes and messages aimed at people over 70 and 16- and 17-year-olds, for whom voting is not compulsory. Lula heads a seven-party alliance ranging from the left-wing Socialism and Liberty Party to the centre-right represented by his running mate, Geraldo Alckmin.
At the rally, the president promised for a new term “a technological revolution” to boost the digital industry and “a revolution in public security so that people are safe and criminals are put in jail”.
Bolsonaro, for his part, urged supporters not to relax and met the ten allied governors elected in the first round. “Brazil has had enough of Lula. Enough,” he said. The senator, who has won the backing of former candidates Ronaldo Caiado and Romeu Zema, proposes a constitutional reform to overhaul the judiciary, lower the age of criminal responsibility and abolish re-election.
Since direct presidential elections returned in 1989, no candidate who came second in the first round has won the runoff.