On Oct. 2, Brazilians will go to the polls to determine whether President Jair Bolsonaro deserves a second term in office. The broad consensus, according to opinion surveys, is that he does not. The far-right Bolsonaro has trailed leftist former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in every poll conducted this year. Barring any drastic developments between now and October, it seems likely that Bolsonaro will lose his reelection bid and Brazil will find itself under Lula’s progressive Workers’ Party (PT) leadership come January 2023 (though Bolsonaro will almost certainly try to fight it).
A much less settled and arguably more intriguing contest is taking place that same day to determine who will lead the state of São Paulo. The PT has never won the governorship there, but its candidate, Fernando Haddad, is currently leading in the polls. A Lula victory on the national level would return the center-left to power, where it was for over a decade before 2016. But a win for the PT in São Paulo—Brazil’s richest, most populous, and most powerful state—would be something entirely new, and might say far more about the country’s political future.
