Six months before the elections, Lula and Bolsonaro polarize and “nini” confuse

With six months to go before the elections in Brazilthe polarization between the former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and the president Jair Bolsonaro it grows and is even accentuated by the confusion that prevails in the so-called “third way”.

The polls released in the last two weeks repeat the scenario that has been designed for months and place Lula as the clear favorite, with an intention to vote a little over 40%, although Bolsonaro has gone from 25% to scratch 30%. of the supports.

With these projections, the October 2 elections would go to a second round that the progressive leader would win with an advantage of between 12 and 15 percentage points, according to polls by the firms Datafolha, PoderData and XP.

In the three surveys, about 15% of the undecided appear and a diffuse “nini” universe divided between four possible candidates that together add up to another 15% and attempt a complex negotiation to define a single standard-bearer.

While politics adjusts pieces, the country faces a difficult situation, with inflation of 10% per year, unemployment of almost 12% and the prospects for economic recovery weighed down by electoral uncertainty itself and the impact of the war in Ukraine.

BOLSONARO WITH GOD, FAMILY, PROPERTY…AND THE MILITARY

The electoral script of the leader of the extreme right is similar to the one that led him to win the 2018 elections and goes through shaking the ghosts of “communism” and corruption against Lula.

It bets on its ultraconservative base, which has among its pillars the evangelist churches and an agenda in which “God, family, property and freedom” are “above everything”, as it repeats in each statement.

Just as in 2018, the captain of the Army reserve will have a military man on his formula. It will not be General Hamilton Mourao, his current vice president and from whom he has distanced himself, but General Walter Braga Netto, a much harder-line officer who held the Ministry of Defense until last Thursday.

The moderating factor could be the Liberal Party, which Bolsonaro joined last year and is aligned on the right, although he was in government with Lula between 2003 and 2010 and is much more pragmatic than ideological.

LULA AND A STEP TO THE CENTER THAT CONCERNS THE LEFT

Pragmatism also calls for Lula, who aspires to rally the leftist forces around his candidacy and also add the “democratic center” to constitute a great front against Bolsonarism.

For that, the progressive leader has taken a step that does not quite convince the most radical and proposes the liberal Geraldo Alckmin as a running mate, a center-right politician well seen by the markets, but whose conservatism generates misgivings in the Party of the Workers (PT).

In the formation led by Lula there are sectors that are pressing for a more progressive vice-presidential candidate and that will defend that position at a meeting of the national leadership scheduled for April 24.

However, throughout the 42-year history of the PT, Lula has always imposed his will, which in Alckmin’s case he explains in the need to join forces against Bolsonaro’s “fascism”, convince the undecided and even fish among the “nini”.

THE CROSSROADS OF THE “MIDDLE STREET”

The so-called “third way” spent this week submerged in great confusion, which left it at an increasingly difficult crossroads.

Former judge Sergio Moro, third in the polls with 8%, left the Podemos party, to which he had joined last November, to join Unión Brasil, which imposed on him the condition of forgetting his presidential candidacy to aspire to a seat in the Congress, which he said he abide by “at this time.”

Unión Brasil, the result of the recent merger of two center-right parties, is considering Senator Simone Tebet as the standard-bearer, but is also negotiating an approach to the Social Democrat Joao Doria, who has made it very clear that he will be a candidate for the Presidency.

According to the polls, Tebet and Doria have 2% support, four points less than Labor Ciro Gomes, who runs outside on the “nini” track and has already warned that he will not give up his aspirations in favor of a hypothetical “third way”.

Source: Elcomercio

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