Brazil Votes Tomorrow With Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro Level
Brazilians vote on Sunday in a presidential election the polls put level. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, 80, is seeking a fourth non-consecutive term against Flávio Bolsonaro, 45, the far-right senator standing because his father is under house arrest for attempting a coup to overturn his 2022 defeat. If neither clears half the vote, a runoff follows on 25 October. Lula has accused Washington of trying to interfere.
The contest has become a measure of American reach in the hemisphere. Donald Trump told a gathering of Latin American leaders after his UN address last month that everybody he had endorsed had won, and the right has in fact taken all seven presidential elections in the region since his second term began. Washington asked for privileged access to Brazil’s rare earths and critical minerals in return for withholding tariffs; Lula refused, and Flávio Bolsonaro has offered them as the way to break American dependence on China. The same policy has a harder edge: dozens of strikes on boats in the regional campaign against the drug trade have killed more than 230 people. Michael Shifter of Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service called Brazil “a big prize” and said American foreign policy is going very badly elsewhere. Pedro Telles of the School of International Relations at FGV said a Flávio win would be a real blow to the left and a major boost to the far-right agenda globally. At home Lula can point to falling unemployment, poverty and inflation and rising average incomes, against rising household debt; he banned online betting days before the vote. Watch whether it goes to a second round at all.