Brazil holds historic election with Lula against Bolsonaro

Rio De Janeiro, Oct. 2 (PTI/AP): Brazilians were voting on Sunday in an election that could signal a sharp turn to the left in the world’s fourth largest democracy after four years of far-right leadership.

Incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro’s administration has been marked by incendiary speech, his testing of democratic institutions and his handling of the disastrous COVID-19 pandemic though many Brazilians admire his defense of conservative social values and him presenting himself as protecting the nation from leftist policies.

Polls opened at 8 a.m. (1100 GMT; 7 a.m. EDT). Because the vote is conducted electronically, preliminary results are usually out within minutes after voting stations close at 5 p.m. (2000 GMT; 4 p.m. EDT), with the final result available a few hours later.

Recent opinion polls have shown da Silva with a commanding lead. The last Datafolha survey published Saturday found that 50% of respondents who intend to vote for a candidate said they would vote for da Silva, against 36% for Bolsonaro. The polling institute interviewed 12,800 people, with a margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points.

Like several of their Latin American neighbors, also dealing with high inflation and an oversized informal economy, polls suggest Brazilians were poised to vote for a leftist candidate.

There was a chance da Silva, a formal metalworker who ran the country between 2003-2010, could win in the first round, without need for a runoff. For that to happen, he would need more than 50% of so-called valid votes, which exclude spoiled and blank ballots.

More than 150 million Brazilians were eligible to vote, though abstention rates can reach as high as 20%.