The count begins in Brazil: polarized vote and a normality inexistent four years ago
The face-to-face between Lula and the eldest son of Bolsonaro passes without great surprises on an election day in which 158 million Brazilians were summoned
São PauloBrazil's electoral authority has begun counting the votes from the first round of the presidential elections. The last time Brazilians stood before an electronic ballot box to elect a new president, in October 2022, the Federal Highway Police (PRF) carried out massive road blocks with traffic controls in the northeast region, which is the great electoral bastion of the left, to suppress the vote for Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. These blockades were considered by the Supreme Court and the Federal Police as part of the attempted coup d'état, for which the then president, Jair Bolsonaro, now imprisoned, was sentenced to a 27-year prison term.
With Lula da Silva (Workers' Party) in power, who is seeking the last re-election of his long career, internal democratic normality returned this Sunday –the interference of the United States, however, has hovered throughout the entire electoral process–, in a harsh clash with Senator Flávio Bolsonaro (Liberal Party), firstborn of the Bolsonaro clan. The polls closed at 22:00 hours (local time).
On social media, the polarization that has been calcified for eight years has been more present than ever throughout the day, fed by flawed algorithms: with posts ranging from personal disqualifications and fake news in a very harsh tone, spread en masse by far-right bots, to fine irony and memes, for which Brazilians are renowned for their creativity.
At the polling stations, however, the climate has been calmer, at least in general terms. Even so, former president Dilma Rousseff, who suffered an impeachment in 2016 and is now president of the BRICS Development Bank, was harassed by Bolsonaro supporters when she voted in Belo Horizonte. A similar situation was experienced by Fernando Haddad, Minister of Finance this term and the PT candidate for governor of São Paulo.
Virgin Mary T-shirts
There have been many queues, some exceeding an hour in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, in a country where voting is mandatory for those between 18 and 70 years old and where, this time, the voting receipt from the first round served as proof of life for all retirees and pensioners who receive Social Security benefits, a sector in which Lula prevails over the far right.
The process required a lot of patience. Voters had to confirm up to six candidates at the electronic ballot box, who were listed by number, because this Sunday they chose, apart from the president, two senators, a deputy to Congress, the governor, and a regional deputy.
As in the last two presidential elections, there has been a re-edition of the chromatic battle at the polling stations. The absolute majority has been for the Brazilian football teams, which are usually part of the Brazilians' Sunday attire, even though today there was no matchday for the Brasileirão league. ARA has witnessed this at various voting points in São Paulo, the largest city in the country.
The far right insists on making the verdeamarela jersey of the Brazilian national football team—which, by the way, is experiencing one of the worst moments in its history—one of its symbols. Left-wing militants wore the traditional red attire, many of them featuring the image of Lula—which is not prohibited by electoral justice—and with 'communist' adaptations of football team jerseys. Quite a few have been seen in São Paulo of Corinthians, the club of which Lula da Silva is a staunch supporter. Four years ago, the torcidas organizadas (supporters' groups) of the São Paulo team broke through the blockades on many federal highways set up by the coup-plotting far right that did not accept the return of the left to power.
The religious war that has marked the final stretch of the electoral campaign has reached the ballot box this time. The news that, in the event of reaching the Palácio do Planalto, Flávio Bolsonaro (reconverted to evangelicalism) would withdraw the status of patron saint of the country from the Virgin of Aparecida, a black image venerated since 1717, has translated into a Catholic mobilization.
This Sunday, the Brazilian Episcopal Conference published a message defending sovereignty –one of Lula's arguments against Donald Trump's support for Flávio Bolsonaro– in which it stated: “We entrust our homeland to the protection of the Virgin Mary”. For the first time, Catholics, mainly elderly women, have been seen going to vote wearing t-shirts with the image of Aparecida, which have become an electoral symbol.