A final push for victory
With such a slim margin between the candidates, both campaigns are hoping to court the first-round abstainers ahead of Sunday’s showdown.
In the weeks since the first vote, Bolsonaro has promised new tax breaks to help boost the economy.
A central part of his platform is a pledge to address his father’s legal predicament: Jair Bolsonaro is currently serving a 27-year prison sentence following his conviction over a coup plot.
Lula, meanwhile, has made reducing abstention a central part of his second-round push.
After round one, his campaign has highlighted Lula’s work to end Brazil’s six-day workweek and unveiled proposals for free public transport on weekends and debt relief for small-scale entrepreneurs.
Goulart said that these measures “have much more of an effect on those who are uninterested in politics than on those who reject the candidates”.
The first round, however, seemed to hand Bolsonaro an advantage. Not only did he secure the largest number of votes, but many of the candidates who were eliminated were his right-wing competitors.
Some experts predict that the nearly 8 percent who voted for those candidates will migrate to Bolsonaro’s camp in the final round.
Bolsonaro also has historical precedent on his side. Brazil began holding direct elections for president in 1989, after its return to democracy.
Since that time, no candidate who trailed in the first round of voting has ever won in the second round.
But Goulart warns against treating precedent as destiny. “A historical observation is not a causal relationship,” she said.
She also pointed out that voters may act in unpredictable ways. Wednesday’s Quaest poll suggests those who backed eliminated candidates in the first round have not uniformly flocked to Bolsonaro.
While the senator has attracted 43 percent of that support, Quaest found that 37 percent were leaning towards Lula — a more balanced redistribution than initially expected.
Quaest’s results also indicate Lula may have an advantage among voters who abstained in the first round or left their ballot blank.
Forty percent of those respondents supported Lula in the poll, compared with 36 percent for Bolsonaro.
