Lula, Bolsonaro try to woo poor voters as Brazil race tightens

Bloomberg

Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and incumbent Jair Bolsonaro campaigned across the northeast of the country on Thursday, with both candidates trying to shore up support among the poor amid signs the presidential race is tightening ahead of the October 30 runoff.
Lula, 76, said at an event in the city of Aracaju, capital of Sergipe state, that he would negotiate with the Brazilian banking federation and major retailers to give more credit to the nation’s lowest earners, if elected.
“The government can create a guarantee fund to provide financing for low-income people,” Lula told journalists. The fund would cover costs in the event that debts go unpaid, he said, adding that as many as 80 million Brazilians owe less than the equivalent of $760.
Lula, who governed the country from 2003 to 2010, won the first round of the vote with 48% support earlier this month. Bolsonaro took 43%.
Since neither clinched the simple majority needed to win outright, they face off again on October 30.
In the second round, the former president would take 54% of valid votes, which exclude blank and null ballots, according to a survey published by Quaest on Thursday. Bolsonaro would get 46%. But when the data was weighted for the voters most likely to show up on election day, Quaest found Lula’s support shrinking to 53% against Bolsonaro’s 47%.
The poll, commissioned by brokerage Genial Investimentos, interviewed 2,000 Brazilians between Oct. 10 and 12, with a margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points.
A separate survey published by AtlastIntel also pointed to a more competitive race, with Lula taking 52.4% of valid votes, compared to Bolsonaro’s 47.6%. The pollster interviewed 4,500 people between October 8 and 12, with a margin of error of plus or minus one percentage point.
Major pollsters failed to fully capture support for the right-wing president and his allies —in some cases undershooting Bolsonaro by nearly 10 percentage points.

Fight for the Northeast
A major pillar of support for Lula comes from the nine states that make up the northeast, historically one of the most impoverished regions of Brazil and a stronghold of the former president’s Workers’ Party. Over two-thirds of voters there back Lula, the Quaest poll found.
But after a better-than-expected first-round showing, Bolsonaro, 67, is trying to make new inroads among the poor.
Bolsonaro made his first visit to northeast since the vote, stopping in Lula’s home state of Pernambuco. There, he defended his handling of the pandemic and apologized for comments made during the height of the crisis.
The president drew scorn at home and abroad for likening the coronavirus to “a little cold,” and casting doubt on the efficacy of vaccines. Nearly 700,000 died from Covid-19 in Brazil, the world’s largest death toll behind the US.
“I believe I did everything possible in the fight against Covid,” he told reporters in the coastal city of Recife. “There may have been some exaggerating on my part. I apologize, but it’s part of the emotion.”