The Brazilian presidential elections will be held on Oct. 2. With four months to go, the former president and figurehead of the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT), Lula da Silva, who made his candidacy official with great fanfare on May 7, is considered the favourite to defeat the incumbent, President Jair Bolsonaro, according to polls.
Should the vote go to a second-round runoff, polling shows 11 points would separate the two rivals. Lula, who was president from 2002 to 2010, still enjoys a high level of popularity, particularly in Brazil’s northeast. When he was running for re-election in 2018, the former metalworker built his campaign on the positive results of his previous terms in office using the slogan, “Make Brazil Happy Again.”
