Lula, who was born in 1945 in a town in the interior of Pernambuco, defied statistics by not succumbing when he was just a baby to hunger and disease, a fate followed by many compatriots in those circumstances. Now he dreams of defying statistics and history again. Never since Brazil restored democracy in 1985 has anyone who came second in the first round of the Presidential elections won the final election. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who on Sunday obtained 45% of the vote compared to Flávio Bolsonaro's 47%, is devising a strategy to attract centrist voters and mobilize the masses of abstentionists, with special interest in those over 70 years of age. He has three weeks to materialize what now sounds like almost a miracle.
From the age of 70, voting is no longer mandatory in Brazil, there is no longer the risk of a fine. More than half take it literally and stay home on election days. In 2022, abstention in this age group reached almost 60%. What the statistics show was also visible on Sunday in the voting centers. Among dozens of people who voted mid-morning at the polling station on the modern campus of the Pontifical Catholic University in the Consolaçao neighborhood of São Paulo, very few were of advanced age.
The exception was a woman who slowly got out of a car and leaned on her son to walk. He politely declined an interview, but he did anticipate his vote for Lula: “So that [Donald Trump] doesn't put his hands in Brazil.” The flag of sovereignty raised by the Brazilian president since Washington punished the country with high trade tariffs has become one of the great themes of the campaign.
The last Datafolha survey before the vote showed that Lula was eleven points ahead of Bolsonaro among the oldest, which explains the president's interest in fishing for votes in that fishing ground. He already tried it in the final stretch, when in the last interview before the vote, to the streaming channel Flow, he addressed those voters: "Do not think that because you are 70 years old you should not vote because the law allows you not to vote. Brazil did not stop because you turned 70, and your needs did not stop either. Because you have children, you have grandchildren, you have great-grandchildren. So, go vote for what you want for your children, for your grandchildren. Go, get up and vote,” Lula said. "Do like me, you know? Don't let old age make you comfortable. We have to overcome old age by facing it, right?"
After eighty, having iron health like that of the president is an exception rather than a rule among his compatriots. Among the tens of thousands of people who participated in the red tide in support of Lula last Saturday in the center of São Paulo, young people stood out and the elderly were few, although they did not go unnoticed. A gray-haired woman proudly held up a banner that read: “Lula voter since 1989.” That year, when the Berlin Wall fell, the union leader was running for the first time in presidential elections. Some twenty-somethings, who were not born at the time, asked her if they could take a selfie with her.
The climate of cautious optimism that was felt among supporters of the Workers' Party (PT) has disappeared after the defeat at the polls. This Monday of electoral hangover, Lula has not been seen. This Tuesday, he is in Brasilia, but still without a public agenda.
The PT, which is witnessing the consolidation of Bolsonarism as a second central force in Brazilian politics, is studying strategies for the comeback. President Lula is considering winking at employers and businessmen and appointing his vice and former rival, Gerando Alckmin, a classic name of the center-right, as Minister of Finance.
The president of the Workers' Party, Edinho Silva, explained this Monday that in this phase of the campaign President Lula will enter into direct confrontation with his rival, the far-right Bolsonaro.
"The second round is another election; we are very clear about it. It involves the direct confrontation of projects, in which Flávio Bolsonaro will face President Lula," Silva explained in an interview with Globo. And with enormous optimism, given the results and the news about errors in the PT's presidential campaign, he added: "We are extremely confident in this confrontation, because we know the country project that Flávio Bolsonaro represents."
On election night, President Lula already offered an appetizer of that idea by frontally attacking Bolsonaro Jr., mentioning “the gruesome biographies” of the family and the candidate's own relationships with the underworld, “with organized crime and the murders in Rio de Janeiro.”
The question remains whether the presidential candidates will accept a live televised face-to-face meeting. "Lula really wants to go to the debates. I don't know how many invitations he will receive, but within his means, he will go to as many as he can," according to the president of his party.
In the first round, neither of them accepted the two opportunities that each channel offered them. Lula's argument amounted to an ambush by everyone against him as he was the only leftist compared to the rest, leaning to the right. Bolsonaro argued that he would only go if Lula came. So one by one the electorate was left without the great opportunity to see the favorites measure themselves live and confront their plans and programs.
Circumstances push Lula to go on the offensive while Bolsonaro Jr. will try to play standing still, which Brazilian analysts say using a soccer simile. That is, entrench yourself in your advantage, without moving too much to avoid any mistakes while waiting for the opponent to make them.
A few days ago, Lula referred to candidate Bolsonaro in a tone of contempt before hundreds of businessmen whom he tried to convince that the dilemma was rather simple. “If the doubt before you were between me and a genius…” Now, with the votes counted, he is 1.8 points behind the senator.
