Bolsonaro isn’t finished yet

The polls got it wrong again.

In the first round of Brazil’s presidential election on Sunday, challenger Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) got 48.4 per cent of the vote, 5.2 points ahead of the incumbent Jair Bolsonaro. Polls had predicted a possible first-round win for the insurgent. But – with neither candidate gaining a majority – they will now face a run-off election on 30 October.

Lula has the lead and remains sanguine about victory. But the momentum is with Bolsonaro, the populist former army captain whose chaotic administration has polarised Brazil.

Under his watch, 685,000 people died from Covid, the number of people facing real hunger went from 19 million to 33 million, and deforestation in the Amazon has hit record levels. Lula, meanwhile, is detested by large swathes of the population who believe his Workers’ party ran a corrupt administration during his first two terms in power between 2003 and 2011.