Nearly 159 million Brazilians with the right to vote will decide this Sunday who will occupy the Palácio do Planalto for the next four years and, implicitly, the future of the New Republic as it was conceived in the 1988 Constitution. President Lula da Silva, 80 years old, of the Workers' Party (PT), with a political career spanning five decades, faces Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, 45 years old, of the Liberal Party (PL), the firstborn of the former president imprisoned for an attempted coup d'état. The situation is completely unprecedented: the uncertainty is total.

The social sectors that left poverty behind thanks to the inclusive policies of Lula da Silva's first term in the presidency (2003-2010), now turned into the new Brazilian middle class, hold the key to Sunday's presidential runoff election. This segment, which represents 51% of the electorate, mostly supports the far-right candidate, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, who already prevailed in the first round with 47.03% of the votes, ahead of Lula's 45.16%.

Daniella Marques, economic coordinator of Flávio Bolsonaro's campaign and well-positioned to be the next Minister of Finance in a hypothetical far-right government, has been promising the financial market for weeks, in the event of a victory, the implementation of an ultraliberal reform agenda inspired by that of the Argentine president, Javier Milei.

Donald Trump's government has entered fully into the Brazilian presidential race, which will hold its first round on Sunday, October 4th. The explicit support for the far-right candidate, Flávio Bolsonaro, has transformed into an electoral interference operation that has forced Lula da Silva, who is running for re-election, and his executive branch to take measures to protect themselves.

Brazilian politics remains entrenched and polarized around the figures of Lula da Silva and Jair Bolsonaro, the last two presidents, who personify the two mass ideological movements with the greatest capacity for mobilization this century: democratic labor populism of social inclusion versus the far-right subservient to the interests of the United States.Four years later, there is a second face-to-face at the polls between Lula, who at 80 is seeking an unprecedented fourth term, and Bolsonaro, this time embodied by his eldest son, Senator Flávio, given that his father is disqualified and serving a 27-year and three-month home detention sentence for the coup attempt. It is an unequal confrontation, due to the curriculum and trajectory of the two contenders, in which the current president emerges as the favorite in the polls (41% of preferences in the first round compared to 36% for the oppositionist), but with all scenarios open.The electoral campaign for the October presidential elections – the first round will be on Sunday the 4th and, if necessary, the second will be on the 25th – has started with a low tone, with the protagonists saving their strength, aware that everything will be decided in the second half of September.Everything stays at home

The far-right's preferred candidate for these elections was the current governor of São Paulo, Tarcísio de Freitas, who had the support of landowners, big business, Faria Lima – the São Paulo avenue that names the country's main financial center –, all the centrist "hinge" parties of the Centrão, which in recent years have largely embraced radicalism, the great neopentecostal evangelical churches, and the main media groups that gave him a veneer of "moderation", ignoring the extermination policy that the São Paulo military police, under his mandate, has carried out in the favelas.Tarcísio de Freitas represented a new phase: Bolsonarism without Bolsonaro, a more presentable, modern, and chameleon-like ultraconservatism, stripped of the rudeness and outbursts of the former president. It was even speculated that the former first lady, Michelle Bolsonaro, would form a tandem with the São Paulo governor as a candidate for vice president. This move, however, generated a war of vanities, jealousies, and ambitions within the clan. The four sons, all of them with elected positions, united against their stepmother upon realizing they were losing control of their father's political capital.

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