"Let it be over": Brazilians, saturated by an aggressive and long electoral campaign

Marcelo feels that he is getting sick, Alexia stopped chatting with her neighbors and Luciene can’t wait for it to end: the electoral duel between Lula da Silva and Jair Bolsonaro It has many Brazilians fed up, after a polarized campaign full of misinformation.

The largest country in Latin America is four days away from deciding on Sunday whether to re-elect far-right President Jair Bolsonaro or whether his nemesis, former leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva, a favorite in the polls, comes to power for the third time.

And in a tight dispute over the 4% of voters who say they will vote null or blank and the undecided (1%), the appearances of the candidates flood the media and social networksand they dominate the conversations of Brazilians.

“I am getting sick because there is a lot of disagreement,” Marcelo Brandão Viana, a Bolsonaro voter, told AFP, lamenting an “overloaded” campaign of “fakenews” and attacks between competing sides.

“I’m living that 24 hours and it’s horrible”adds this 51-year-old bank clerk, unable to deprive himself of checking his WhatsApp groups during his break time, outside a shopping center in Brasilia.

Sitting in a chair on Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro, José Guilherme Araújo neither can he escape the electoral noise.

“I feel exhausted, I’m fed up”This 65-year-old bearded lawyer, white hair and green swimsuit with the Brazilian flag, tells AFP that he will vote null.

“There is only talk of choice on the main television channels, it is awful. I try to watch closed channels (cable) to escape from the matter, “she adds.

The final duel between Bolsonaro and Lula He had been almost assured since last year, when the former president regained his political rights after seeing his corruption convictions overturned.

Many Brazilians have the impression that The campaign started then.

in São Paulo, Alexia Ebert silenced her WhatsApp group of the condominium, turned into a continuous thread of political information and misinformation. “She couldn’t take it anymore,” says the 22-year-old student.

Some, like Aline Tescer, complain that the proposals for the next four years were conspicuous by their absence. “I see myself the same as in the last election: they are always the same things, the same accusations and I feel I have no option to vote,” says the 35-year-old woman in Sao Paulo.

Luciene Soares says to be “disappointed” by the “disrespect” instigated by the far-right president.

“I prefer not to say who I vote for because one is afraid of people’s reactions. I don’t talk about politics because it creates problems,” says this 48-year-old shopkeeper in Brasilia, dressed in a green and yellow blouse depicting the Brazilian flag, a national symbol that the Bolsonaristas “unhappily” appropriated.

“Among our friends and our family we say: ‘God! I hope it’s over.”

Exhaustion does not appear in the polls that are published weekly, but experts notice it on the street and on the internet, in a country with 171.5 million users of social networks in 2022 (80% of the population, +14% compared to 2021), according to the study Digital from the agencies We Are Social and Hootsuite.

The high level of vote consolidation and the bombardment of information “end up anesthetizing the electorate” and “tiring it,” says Amaro Grassi, a sociologist at the Getulio Vargas Foundation’s Department of Public Policy Analysis.

“The permanent presence of campaign content did not start in this election but today it is very accentuated“, he adds.

“Now they talk about politics even on gossip sites“, says Paulista Iamylle Kauane, visiting Rio.

This 21-year-old social worker is waiting the end of the elections “to get back to normal.”

According to Grassi, “most of the population will want to return to their lives and turn the page“, but “a climate of political exasperation will remain unavoidable.”

Although there are who is tireless.

“I don’t feel tired,” says Leandro Albino Oliveira, 36, wearing a white shirt and wearing one of the hats he sells on the beach in Rio. “We are not going to rest until our president is re-elected.”