Presidential campaign polarizes Brazil

Left, far-right candidates likely to duke it out in final round of contest

Brazil looks to be charging headlong into a two-horse presidential race between the far right and the left in what has been an at times surreal and unpredictable campaign.

But while right-wing Jair Bolsonaro and leftist Fernando Haddad head opinion polls, they’re also the most hated candidates, something that analyst Thomaz Favaro believes could pose a problem for the next president’s credibility.

“The fact that these options generate so much rejection can have serious consequences for the country,” said Favaro, from Control Risk consultancy.

“It brings a problem of legitimacy for the next government which will struggle to implement its reforms... Whoever wins, he’ll come up against a lot of resistance in Congress.”

In the latest opinion poll by Ibope, Bolsonaro led with 28 percent while Haddad climbed to second on 19 percent just a week after polling a mere 8, directly after his nomination by the Workers’ Party (PT) as their replacement candidate after former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was barred from standing because he is serving a 12-year prison sentence for corruption.

But 42 percent of respondents said they would never vote for Bolsonaro – a figure that has remained consistent amidst accusations of racism, sexism and homophobia against the ex-army captain over controversial comments – while 29 percent reject Haddad.

In a further twist, should those two get through the October 7 first round to the run-off second round three weeks later, Ibope’s poll says they would finish level with 40 percent each.

A reader who wrote in to the economic newspaper Valor summed up the mood: “I will never forgive Bolsonaro for forcing me to vote PT.”

When it comes to the second round of voting it may well be a case of whom voters hate the least rather than like the most.

“Unless someone [else] bounces back, we will have an election like 1989 when Fernando Collor, a politician from an insignificant party, fought a duel with Lula,” and won, said Lincoln Secco, an analyst and historian at the University of Sao Paulo.

The uncertainty of an election, in which the initial front-runner was languishing in jail while his main opponent recovered in hospital, shows no sign of abating.