Red is back in fashion this election day in the southern part of Rio de Janeiro, where the majority expected a victory for former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the historic leader of the Workers’ Party (PT) in the most recent presidential elections. polarized in recent history.
In customary carnival style, voters went to the polls dressed in the colors of their candidate. Crimson red, for the Lullists; yellow and green, for the voters of the ultra-conservative president, Jair Bolsonaro, whose campaign has seized the colors of the national soccer team a couple of months before the World Cup in Qatar, preferably with a stamp of Neymar.
“Bolsonaro’s men are no longer so dressed this time because they are ashamed,” said a 40-year-old “carioca” voter near Jardim Botánico, who was going to vote in a red-orange dress covered in Lula stickers.
No one here seems to agree with Simone Tebet, the centrist candidate in the first round of elections, who joined Lula’s campaign on the condition that the old union leader wear white since red scared undecided voters.
Some Lulistas even went to the polling stations dressed in national team shirts adorned with red stars or Lula stickers. The fans of Flamengo, for their part, the historic club from Gávea, in Rio, which won the Copa de Libertadores on Saturday, came in their red and black uniform with stickers, most of them Lula. In Gávea, next to the Catholic University, groups of Flamengo fans sang “Lula-la!” on the terraces on Saturday night.
This is how it was in the center of Rio during these historic elections in which Lula maintains a narrow advantage in the opinion polls, 52% compared to 48% for Bolsonaro, according to the Datafolha poll, published on Saturday.
But some voters were more concerned. “My joy for Flamengo’s victory yesterday has been overshadowed by the concern of today’s election, because the political climate is very intense, the polls are working with a 2010 census and social networks are unscrupulous,” said Ronald Held, PUC professor.
In other outlying districts of the city and in other regions of the country, Bolsonarism was not hiding. Much less in the western part of Rio, where Bolsonaro voted. There, the vote of shame -or rather, of fear- is for Lula, largely because the area is controlled by far-right paramilitaries linked to Bolsonarism.
Bolsonaro was confident of victory. “We have had good news in recent days. God willing, we will be victorious today,” he announced before voting in a military village in the western zone. The good news to which the president was referring is unknown.
Lula voted in Sao Paulo, where he was politically educated 50 years ago in the automobile factories of the peripheral city of ABC. Along with Rio and the neighboring state of Minas Gerais, the state of Sao Paulo, with 34.6 million voters, is where these elections are played.
The city of Sao Paulo, with 12 million inhabitants, will most certainly vote for Lula and his party colleague Fernando Haddad, candidate in the gubernatorial elections against the favorite Bolsonaro Tarcísio de Freitas. But Bolsonaro -and de Freitas- will win in the interior of Sao Paulo, more suburban and rural where antipietism -the visceral hatred of the PT- is deeply rooted.
In Minas Gerais, the conservative governor, Romeu Zema, who prevailed with a comfortable victory in the first round, actively supports Bolsonaro in a key campaign. It remains to be seen if Zema manages to lift the vote for the ultra-conservative president, whose narrow margin of victory in the first round in Minas Gerais would not be enough to hand him victory throughout the country today despite the fact that historically whoever wins in Minas –”the Ohio of Brazil”, according to the journalist Bernardo Gutiérrez – wins in Brazil.
If Lula manages to maintain or reduce Bolsonaro’s lead in the first round in these three southeastern states, his huge lead in the historically poor northeastern states, where he is getting more than 60% voting intention in the polls, will guarantee victory. of the former president of the PT.
In states like Pernambuco or Bahia, strongholds of the left for two decades, the only unknown is whether the evangelical caravan led by first lady Michelle Bolsonaro has convinced part of the neo-Pentecostal electorate that Lula -as she often says at her rallies- it is the “demon, the candidate of the shadows”.
After maintaining his lead in the polls of between 3 and 8 points over the last few weeks, the Lula campaign seems confident that victory will be his. But doubts about abstention, which tends to be concentrated in the poorest segment of the electorate, kept the Lulista side unsettled.
Voting is mandatory in Brazil, but in the first round abstention stood at 21%, the highest level in the last presidential elections. “If abstention exceeds 24% there will be problems for Lula,” said Luiz Eduardo Soares, the PT’s former security adviser.
The high abstention can be explained by two main factors. First, the cost of transportation at a time of hardship for half of the Brazilian population given the inflation of basic foodstuffs, which is around 15%. “It’s cheaper to pay the fine than to pay for the bus,” said a pensioner in the Amazonian state of Pará last week. Those over 70 years of age are not required to vote.
To deal with this problem, the main cities have announced free transportation for election day. But there are signs that not all transport companies are complying. Eduardo Paes, the mayor of Rio, who supports Lula, denounced this morning that the bus company – with links to the militias – was still charging tickets in the disputed West Zone of Rio where Bolsonaro hoped to win votes to expand his advantage in the condition.
A series of indications that Bolsonaro authorities intend to hinder voters have been denounced by Lula’s campaign in recent hours. Circulation on highways, in northeastern states, is being hindered by the Federal Traffic Police, known for its Bolsonarist sympathies. Senator Otto Alencar, from Bahia, denounced that he was detained by the Traffic Police in Bahia, because he was wearing Lula’s sticker 13. In Rio de Janeiro, the path of the bridge to Niterói has been blocked by the Army. According to Lauro Jardim, a columnist for ‘O Globo’, this control, which hinders voters’ access to the polls, was authorized by the president. The president of the Federal Supreme Court, Alexandre Moraes – who has been a harsh critic of the false news of the Bolsonaro campaign – minimized the impact of these measures.
The other factor that can increase abstention is the climate of polarization and violence. The extraordinary scenes of the deputy of the Liberal Party of Bolsonaro Carla Zambelli, who chased a black journalist at gunpoint through the streets of Sao Paulo last Saturday, aggravate the climate of fear. Representatives of the Washington-based Organization of American States (OAS), which is attending the elections as an observer, have condemned Zambelli’s violence and called for the incident to be investigated.
