Presidential in Brazil: closing of polling stations, Lula favorite

Les Brésiliens se sont pressés en masse pour choisir leur président, mais aussi les députés, un tiers des sénateurs et les gouverneurs des 27 Etats.

Posted Oct 2, 2022, 10:54 PM

Will Lula win his bet? While the polls closed at 5 p.m. this Sunday in Brazil (10 p.m. in France), the whole country awaits the result of the presidential election that the former president hopes to win in the first round against outgoing Jair Bolsonaro. The result should be known a few hours after the start of the counting. According to a very first estimate quoted by the Reuters agency and relating to 0.1% of the voting machines, Lula would obtain 51% of the votes against 37% for his right-wing rival.

Brazilians rushed en masse to choose their president, but also the deputies, a third of the senators and the governors of the 27 states, with long queues in this immense country of continental dimensions.

“If the elections are clean, no problem. May the best win ! “said President Bolsonaro, 67, voting in the morning in Rio de Janeiro. Annoyed by the insistent questions from the press, Bolsonaro, dressed in the national football team’s yellow and green jersey under which he wore a bulletproof vest, would not say clearly whether he would recognize the result.

Bolsonaro left behind in the polls

He is, however, behind Lula in the polls (50% against 36%), with a record rejection rate due to his denial of the Covid which has killed more than 680,000 people in Brazil, and the economic crisis in a country where more than 30 million people suffer from hunger.

Former left-wing president (2003-2010) Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, 76, voted shortly before in Sao Bernardo do Campo, a working-class suburb of Sao Paulo. “For me, this is the most important election,” said the former steelworker, who is in his sixth presidential race to seek a third term, 12 years after leaving power at a stratospheric popularity rate (87% ). “We don’t want any more hatred, discord. We want a country at peace,” he said, referring to the fractures of a highly polarized Brazil, which has 214 million inhabitants.

Crowds at polling stations

In the polling stations, voters often dressed in Bolsonarist yellow and green or Lulist red sometimes had to wait several hours to vote because of the crowds. At midday, the president of the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE), Alexandre de Moraes, assured that the vote was taking place “without problems”, and wanted to “reaffirm the reliability and transparency” of the electronic ballot box system. , many times criticized by Jair Bolsonaro.

Over the course of this crucial election for the future of the young democracy in Brazil, the clash at the Lula-Bolsonaro summit relegated the nine other candidates to the rank of extras. “The question is whether there will be a second round or not, and it’s impossible to predict,” Adriano Laureno, an analyst at consultants Prospectiva, told AFP.

Les Echos, with AFP