Brazilians are voting on Sunday in a general election in which the two front-runners for the presidency bear very familiar names. The incumbent, veteran left-wing leader Luíz Inácio Lula da Silva, will be challenged by 11 candidates, the most prominent of whom is right-winger Flávio Bolsonaro. In the last election four years ago, Lula narrowly defeated Flávio Bolsonaro's father Jair, but the tumultuous aftermath of the election, which saw Jair Bolsonaro convicted of plotting a coup after thousands of his supporters stormed the Brazilian Congress, has had a lasting impact on the nation's political life and this election.
Jair Bolsonaro, the right-wing former army captain who governed Brazil from 2019 to 2023, will not be running for president in this election. Not only is the 71-year-old barred from standing for office, he is also serving a 27-year sentence for plotting a coup after he lost the 2022 election to Lula. Due to recurrent health problems, he is currently under house arrest rather than in a cell, but he has had restrictions imposed on him prohibiting him from posting on social media or making public statements.
Despite these restrictions, his shadow - and sometimes his moving and talking image - looms large over this election. At the event where Flávio Bolsonaro officially launched his presidential campaign, an AI-generated avatar of Jair Bolsonaro endorsed his son's candidacy. When pressed by the Supreme Court about the deepfake, Jair Bolsonaro's lawyers may have denied he had given his permission for its use, but there is nevertheless little doubt that Flávio Bolsonaro has the backing of his father.
While there are 12 candidates running for the presidency, there are only two who have reached double figures in the opinion polls, and they are Luíz Inácio Lula da Silva and Flávio Bolsonaro. BBC Brasil's poll tracker shows them both hovering around the 40% mark, with Lula slightly ahead of Bolsonaro. The other 11 candidates are polling at 4% or less.
If none of the candidates gains 50% of valid votes in the first round on 4 October, the top two contenders will proceed to a run-off election on 25 October. The opinion polls suggest a run-off is highly likely - but with a relatively high number of voters still undecided just days before the election, an outright win cannot be entirely ruled out. BBC Brasil's poll aggregator suggests that at the end of September, 9% of voters were either still undecided, or planning to spoil their ballot, cast a blank ballot or not go to the polls at all.
Brazilians who are 16 years of age or older are entitled to vote and it is compulsory for those aged between 18 and 70 who are literate, with a fine imposed on those who do not cast a ballot. Almost 160 million Brazilians are eligible to vote in this election and, with polls typically surveying just thousands of people, the end result can differ considerably from the indications given by surveys. Lula, the 80-year-old candidate for the left-wing Workers' Party, has been president three times already.
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