Words at the ballot box

Sunday's presidential election matched the incumbent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, against Senator Flávio Bolsonaro. After casting his ballot, Lula told journalists that if reelected he needs “to do double of what we have done,” and voiced confidence in a first-round win.

Flávio Bolsonaro spoke to reporters at the Rio de Janeiro voting center where he cast his ballot on Sunday:

Bolsonaro's voters: crime and faith

Rosane Wink, 67, a retired engineer and lifelong conservative voter, backs the senator's pledge to classify criminal groups as terrorist organizations. The previous month, she said, a criminal held a gun to her stomach, bit her hand and removed her wedding ring. Voting in Rio de Janeiro, she said: “It's a kind of terrorism that they're doing with us”.

Maria Ribeiro, a 50-year-old cellphone vendor from Brasilia, said she voted for Bolsonaro to secure the freedom to express her Evangelical religion and hopes he follows his father. “I voted for his father, and I don't regret it,” she said. The 45-year-old senator is the son of far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is serving a 27-year sentence for a coup attempt, and he has campaigned to free his father and bring him back to politics.

The voters who fear a Bolsonaro win

Lorena Zschaber, a 40-year-old photographer, watched the results roll in at an LGBTQ+-friendly bar in downtown Rio de Janeiro, worried by the candidate's closeness to his father. During Jair Bolsonaro's presidency, she said, “people felt more at ease to discriminate”. “I'm an LGBTQ+ woman, I can't think of anything worse happening than Flávio Bolsonaro being elected,” she added.

Lula's base and a harder race

Rosângela Resende da Rocha, 69, formerly a stay-at-home mother, supports Lula's social policies for the “less fortunate” and how he stands up to Trump. At a Brasilia voting center, she said: “That crazy guy wants to come in here to buy our country, so that our country will be like it is over there”. “He won't succeed if Lula wins,” she added.

Lula retains a loyal base that credits his social policies with improving millions of Brazilians' lives. His third term, however, is clouded by an affordability crisis and a corruption scandal that caught the justice who led the investigation that sentenced Jair Bolsonaro. Carlos Melo, a political science professor at Insper University in Sao Paulo, said that weeks ago many in the Lula campaign did not expect the election to become so difficult.

If none of the 12 presidential candidates wins more than 50 percent of the vote, the top two finishers advance to a runoff on October 25.