L
ula defined the second round like an extension? What does that mean? That this is not a new game, that it starts from zero to zero. It is an extension, with some adjustments, of what was the first round.
In the first round, the two candidates who passed the second round, combined, obtained 91 percent of the vote: Lula 48, Bolsonaro 43. It can be assumed, therefore, that they are available to join either candidate, only 9 percent of the votes. Considering that the difference between them is 5 percent, Bolsonaro would have to win more than half of those votes. Simone Tebet and Ciro Gomes got around 7 percent of those votes. Tebet has already decided to support Lula in the second round. The PDT, Ciro’s party, too, although its adherence was ambiguous.
In these terms, the preferences for Lula are maintained, as confirmed by the first poll of the second round, in which he has an advantage of 10 points, counting only the valid votes. It would grow about six points in relation to the result of the first round, while Bolsonaro would grow three.
But politics is not arithmetic. It’s more like algebra, with unknowns to figure out. As soon as the result of the first round came out, with Lula failing to win the first round, the mood changed. The depression passed from the government camp to that of the opposition, which was struggling not to lose in the first round.
After the first moment of a kind of civic hangover, the correlation of forces for the second round became clearer. As an effect of the expected increase in votes for Bolsonaro, governors who did not publicly risk joining him, when the prospect of Lula’s victory in the first round was likely, and who left open the possibility of even joining Lula, assumed the I support Bolsonaro.
Lula also received predictable support, such as from the FHC, the PDT and other parties, in addition to Simone Tebet.
Given these arrangements, what is the likely outlook for the second round? Bolsonaro and his supporters offer virtually nothing for his eventual second term. His speeches and fake news spread by robots – with the scandalous complacency of the TSE – they practically limit themselves to spreading the risks that the country would run if Lula were to govern Brazil again. They are not counting on reducing the level of rejection – around 50 percent for Bolsonaro – but on trying to raise it for Lula – around 39 percent.
Lula tries to take the debate and the opposition between the two candidates to the programmatic level, comparing what his government was and what the disastrous government of Bolsonaro is. The surprising increase in the final vote for Bolsonaro reveals the relative success of the mechanisms of action of Bolsonaroism, which managed to reduce the distance that the polls pointed in favor of Lula, from more than 10 percent to 5 percent. Despite Bolsonaro’s misrule, 43 percent of the population voted for a new term for him. He reveals how the positions of the extreme right are entrenched in Brazilian society, which deserve further discussion. Five percent of that total probably came from Ciro’s voters, who dropped from eight to 3 percent, convincing part of his voters with his anti-PT speech, who exercised the useful vote right.
Lula maintained his vote, predicted by the polls, always above 45, reaching 48.5 percent, only 1.5 percent away from victory in the first round. With the political support that he has already received, plus Lula’s good performance in the second round – between debates, television programs and rallies – Lula maintains the preferences to win.
For the first days of the second round – with the TSE’s approval and slowness to act – it will be a war of propaganda, of fake newsthe great instrument of Bolsonaro, in which the lies will have to occupy part of the time and energy of the opposition, to counteract and deny the fake news.
The electoral map of the first round is very similar to that of the 2014 campaign, in which Dilma Rousseff lost to Aecio by two thirds to one third in the south and southeast of the country, but triumphed to win in the northeast with more than 70 percent of the votes. Bolsonaro’s vote in a state like Sao Paulo, for example, was impressive, as was Lula’s throughout the Northeast. It is another topic for a deeper analysis. But now he will operate with a map that will not change much in the second round.
It will be a final with a difference not very different from that of the first round, with emotion, as it was in 2014, but with preferences that Lula must not lose in extra time.
