Brazilians vote with Lula leading the polls against Bolsonaro

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
30 Oct 2022 12:42
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The leader of the Workers' Party is ahead in the polls with a 52% to 48% lead.

Supporters of Brazilian presidential candidate Lula da Silva wave the candidate’s flag on a street in Brasília, the Brazilian capital, on October 22. (AFP via Getty Images)

Sunday's election in Brazil is the country's most significant in years, and the leftist candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is the people's favorite to replace the far-right President Jair Bolsonaro's four years of disastrous rule.

On the night of the election, polls showed that Lula, the Workers' party nominee, had a four to eight percentage point advantage.

The incumbent's popularity was overestimated in the polls prior to the first round, so things remain unsure whether he is winning another four years in office.

The two contenders sparred in a last-ditch debate on Friday night that began with 30 minutes of name-calling and made little progress over the course of two hours. “Bolsonaro has not made one proposal for the future of Brazil,” Simone Tebet, who placed third in the first round and is now a Lula backer, said about the President’s persistent attacks. “He prefers to use the debate to provoke and accuse. It’s the narrative of the defeated.”

Yesterday, as Brazil experiences its most polarized election campaign in decades, the leftist presidential candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his opponent far-right President, Jair Bolsonaro, traded jabs during their final televised stand-off on Friday that comes only two days before today's runoff.

Recent surveys indicate that Lula da Silva, the head of the Workers' Party, has a little better chance of winning the presidency for a third term; observers, however, suggest that the election campaign is extremely tight and that both candidates have roughly equal prospects of winning.

Poll results released by Atlas Intel last Sunday show that da Silva's poll numbers slightly increased against his far-right opponent Jair Bolsonaro, where the numbers showed that Lula leads on public support with 52%, up from 51.1%, while Bolsonaro's numbers dropped from a previous 46.5% to a 46.2% a few days before Sunday's runoff.