Brazil’s poor once propelled Lula to power. Now many are wavering

If incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is to win an unprecedented fourth term in Brazil’s presidential election, which starts on Sunday, he will likely need the votes of women like Silvana Santiago da Silva.A single mum at 14, the now 41-year-old street cleaner has at various periods over the years been able to supplement her income from low-paying jobs with the Bolsa Família, or family purse. A government cash-transfer programme to Brazil’s poorest citizens, it was created shortly after the 80-year old Lula first assumed office back in 2003.“It helps put food on the table,” Silvana says of what became the banner programme of Brazil’s first working class leader.As a condition for first enrolling in the Bolsa, Silvana had to send her daughter Karen to school. She says this incentive helped her raise the first member of her family to go to university. READ MOREThe beneficiary of a government scholarship, Karen is now – to her mother’s great pride -a teacher in São Paulo’s public school system. “I believe the PT always worked on behalf of the poor and our lives improved,” says Silvana, using the Portuguese initials of Lula’s Workers Party.And yet with just days to go before Sunday’s first round, Silvana says she still does not know if she will vote for Lula this time. She insists there is no chance of her voting for his main rival, 45-year old far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro, because of what she sees as his misogyny. Instead, with voting obligatory, she is considering opting for “none of the above”. Her dissatisfaction with politics is rooted in frustration with the state of the economy and more specifically the cost of living. Towels for sale depicting Brazilian presidential candidates Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Flávio Bolsonaro in Brasília. Photograph: Sergio Lima/AFP via Getty Images Brazil's president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro, of the Liberal Party. Photograph: Miguel Schincariol/AFP via Getty Images “The prices of things are so high that this month I will be buying less than last month. The cost of living is depressing. It feels like the economy is stuck,” she says.Silvana’s frustration is reflected in recent numbers by leading pollster Datafolha. These show the Lula government’s disapproval rating is at 50 per cent. This discontent has helped Flávio overcome allegations of his involvement in multiple corruption scandals – not to mention links to organised crime figures in Rio de Janeiro – and remain competitive with Lula heading into Sunday’s first round.Datafolha has Lula on 40 per cent, four points ahead of Flávio. If none of the 13 candidates wins an absolute majority, the two front-runners will contest a run-off on October 25th. In a second-round matchup Datafolha has Lula beating Flávio 47 per cent to 45 per cent, within the margin of error.Particularly worrying for Lula is that poor women like Silvana were decisive in handing him a third term in 2022. He narrowly defeated Flávio’s father, the then-incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, who was subsequently convicted of trying to mount a coup after his defeat.Lula’s support among women more than made up for Bolsonaro senior’s edge among men.In part the discontent among voters reflects the reality that once-controversial programmes set up by the Workers Party, which helped lift millions out of misery, are no longer political flashpoints. In 2006 defending Bolsa Família from unfounded allegations that the opposition would end it helped deliver a thumping victory for Lula.Brazilian president and presidential candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and governor of Bahia Jeronimo Rodrigues wave during a campaign rally in Salvador, Bahia state, Brazil. Photograph: Antonello Veneri/AFP via Getty Images But now the plan is part of the national furniture. All Jair Bolsonaro did was rebrand it during his far-right government and Flávio pledges to continue it.For progressive critics of the Workers Party, the deeper causes of the discontent with Lula’s administration stem from the party’s uneasy accommodation with the economic status quo it inherited. “The PT’s great contribution has been to minimise misery within a liberal macroeconomic model. But we are still very far from developing Brazil’s potential to create a welfare state,” says Eduardo Luiz Zen, a sociologist at the Institute for Applied Economic Research, a federal government think-tank.In a polemical recent paper Zen describes the Workers Party as the “left-wing arm of Brazilian neoliberalism”. Critics like him point out that while inequality in Brazil is close to record lows the country remains home to one of the world’s most unequal societies, even after the Workers Party has been in power for over 17 of the last 24 years.Workers Party leaders have been quick to counter Zen’s thesis and blame the lack of change less on Lula and his colleagues than a deeply entrenched system that rewards the well-off and insiders who in turn vigorously guard against structural reforms that would threaten their privileges. “Democracy here in Brazil remains oligarchical,” says Valter Pomar, a leading leftist on the party’s national committee. In the context of the retreat of socialism globally and the advance of the far-right across Latin America, Pomar says the Workers Party’s victory has not been the transformation of Brazil, but to keep the possibility alive.“We managed to keep a door open,” he argues. “This door can lead us to build a profoundly different Brazil and also to change Brazil’s place in the world. Electing Lula in 2026 does not guarantee that this will become a reality. But we managed to keep the door open, going against the grain of what is happening in a large part of the world.”Conscious of the frustrations felt by voters like Silvana, Lula has sought to address some of their immediate concerns, rather than just continuing to hold out the promise of a societal transformation in the future. Given how polarised the campaign is, he knows any slip in his support among poorer voters could prove fatal to his reelection bid.Election posters in the Cajazeiras neighbourhood of Salvador, Bahia state, Brazil. Photograph: Amanda Cotrim/AFP via Getty Images The government has already announced a 15 per cent increase in the Bolsa Família. Last week it also significantly expanded a debt-relief programme targeting the 38 per cent of low-income families behind on debt payments. Lula has also made a central plank of his campaign a pledge to force a reluctant congress to legally enshrine a five-day working week.To complaints from the opposition, the new increase in the Bolsa Família will start hitting recipients’ accounts in the week before a likely second round. “This is a highly complex race that will be decided on details, and the finest details at that,” says political consultant André Pereira César. But in Brazil’s volatile, highly polarised politics it is unclear how much cut-through such old-fashioned policy pledges now achieve in campaigns. The lead-up to Sunday’s vote has instead been dominated by false claims that Flávio, in a sop to his evangelical Christian allies, would strip Our Lady of Aparecida of her official title as the Patroness of Brazil.These have reignited the internecine feuding between members of the country’s supreme court with those aligned to Flávio and Lula battling over Flávio’s efforts to remove the false claims from social media, even as Lula seeks to use the controversy to court Catholic voters.For Silvana though, much of the campaign is passing her by. Working six days a week, and spending four hours a day just getting to and from work, she complains she just does not have the energy for politics. “It would be nice to have a five-day week. Then I’d have more time for everything,” she says.