The Southeast poses challenges for leaders in the polls. PT member Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva tried to widen the gap with Jair Bolsonaro (PL) to win a possible new mandate tomorrow (2).
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Candidate for re-election and victorious in the region in 2018, the current president depends on the Southeast to reach the second round, when he will need traction, especially in São Paulo. A second stage between Fernando Haddad (PT) and Rodrigo Garcia (PSDB), for example, in the dispute for Bandeirantes, would leave the president without a platform.
In Minas, the attempt to take Alexandre Kalil (PSD) to the second round against Romeu Zema (Novo) seeks to maintain a platform for Lula if the presidential election does not end in the first stage. The governor of Minas Gerais even mobilized anti-PTism, but he moved away and is now trying to maintain a safe distance from Bolsonaro.
Acts by Lula and Bolsonaro on the eve of the election, taken as the campaign's final move, will be held this Saturday, the 1st, in the capital of São Paulo, alongside their candidates for the government of São Paulo. Lula will take part in a walk with Haddad on Avenida Paulista, and Bolsonaro confirmed his presence on a motorbike with Tarcísio de Freitas (Republicans), leaving from Praça Campo de Bagatelle, in the north zone.
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According to Average Estadão Data, Lula has 40% of the voting intentions of the Southeast electorate, compared to 36% for Bolsonaro – a smaller difference than the national scenario, in which the PT member's lead is 14 percentage points.
The idea of Bolsonaro's campaign to focus the last few days on the Southeast, in addition to doubling the bet on Tarcísio, is to remove the necessary difference and push the dispute to the second round. The assessment is that the PL candidate in Rio, Cláudio Castro, is more detached from Bolsonaro, and the name running for government in Minas, Carlos Viana (PL), has not taken off.
The PT campaign also had a presence in the region in the final stretch. According to federal deputy Alexandre Padilha (PT-SP), Lula was in the largest electoral colleges to consolidate votes in the Southeast and “reinforce the possibility of winning the elections in the first round”. “Our big campaign is to reduce abstention, encourage people to vote and awaken the desire and willingness to vote,” said Padilha.
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This Friday, the 30th, Bolsonaro went to Poços de Caldas (MG), where he participated in a motorcycle race. Lula, in turn, passed through three states – Rio, Bahia and Ceará, alongside his candidates for local governments.
Considered a thermometer for the national election, the region concentrates the largest portion of the electorate that elected Lula in 2002 and Bolsonaro in the last election. 20 years ago, of the more than 39,5 million votes that the PT member received in the first round, 45,9% came from the four states. In Bolsonaro's case, this percentage was 48,5% of a total of 49,3 million votes. Only in 2006 was it different, when Geraldo Alckmin (PSB) received almost ten percentage points (39,3% compared to 48%) more than Lula in the Southeast even though he lost the election nationally.
“Everything in the Southeast is significant, the undecided voters in this region, for example, represent more than 2 million voters. If the majority supports one or the other candidate, there is no way it won’t make a difference in the final tally”, said political scientist Antonio Lavareda, president of the board of the Ipespe institute.
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Diary
The relevance of the region is due to the economic and contingent importance of the electorate. “The president does not need to have the support of the GDP to govern, but, if he does, he can at least talk to people in the sector”, said Eduardo Grin, professor at Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV). Lula, who is from Pernambuco, settled in the region.
This strength translates, above all, into the agenda of the four presidential candidates who lead voting intentions. The PT member, who set up his own campaign base in São Paulo, made public appearances at least 21 times throughout September in the region, excluding the days he was in the capital of São Paulo for alignment meetings.
Bolsonaro traveled less, spending 14 days in the Southeast. He rushed to make up time allotted for international travel mid-campaign. On Wednesday, he promoted a motorcycle party in Santos (SP), where he said that Lula wants to “return to the scene of the crime” and called him “the biggest thief in the history of Brazil”. As shown by the Estadão, president and supporters prepare for today – the eve of the first round – a series of motorbikes and motorcades
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Ciro Gomes (PDT), the candidate who was most in the Southeast during the campaign, visited the States 22 times. On Monday, the 26th, for example, he chose the capital of São Paulo to read his “Manifesto to the Nation”, at the campaign's central committee. During the same period, Simone Tebet (MDB) was in São Paulo 18 times, twice in Rio and once in Minas.
Faithful of the scales
São Paulo, Minas and Rio usually act as balances in presidential elections. Minas is seen as a reference, as it mirrors the results of elections at the national level. Since the Old Republic, all candidates who won the dispute in Minas triumphed in the national election, with the exception of 1950. “Minas is a kind of 'mini-Brazil'. Those elected there are able to dialogue with different 'Brazils'”, said Grin.
Since redemocratization, Rio only missed the winner of the first round in 1998, when the PT beat the PSDB by a minimal margin of votes in the state, and in 2002, when Anthony Garotinho won 42,18% of the electorate, compared to 40,16 .2006% of the then candidate Lula. São Paulo residents, in turn, bet on the PSDB candidates for President in three consecutive elections – 2010 (Geraldo Alckmin, Lula's current vice-president), 2014 (José Serra) and XNUMX (Aécio Neves).
According to political scientist Marcus Ianoni, from the Fluminense Federal University (UFF), the most competitive candidacies in the States are always rooted in local platforms. “In this sense, it is rational for there to be an intersection between presidential and state elections,” he stated.
(Estadão Content)
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