Nine-tenths of a percentage point. That is the width of Brazil’s future as measured on Friday by the pollsters of CNT/MDA: 46.8 per cent for Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, 45.9 per cent for President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, nine days before the October 25 run-off. As Al Jazeera reported, it is the latest in a slate of surveys showing the right-wing challenger ahead of the left-wing incumbent — and yet the experts who read these numbers for a living still call the race a toss-up. A lead so thin is less a verdict than a held breath.
The man holding the lead carries the most loaded surname in Brazilian politics. Flávio Bolsonaro, a senator from Rio de Janeiro, is the eldest son of Jair Bolsonaro, the imprisoned former president, and he arrived in the run-off by finishing ahead of Lula in the first round — a result the Guardian described as a surprise that heralds the rise of a political dynasty. That same election swept the former president’s wife, two of his sons and one of his brothers into Congress. Neither contender cleared the 50 per cent of valid votes needed to win outright, which is why Brazil must do it all again on the 25th.
There is an old lesson in such moments, one Brazilians know in their bones: the father sits in a cell, and the son stands at the ballot box carrying his name like a flag and a debt at once. The country has been choosing between Lula and the Bolsonaro name for weeks now, and each new poll lands like a cough in a quiet room — noticed, debated, and too faint to settle anything.
So the statisticians hedge and the voters wait. A toss-up, the experts say, which is their honest way of admitting that 46.8 and 45.9 are the same number wearing different jackets. On October 25 the counting stops, and one of those jackets becomes a presidency.