There is a parallel world inside the Golden Hair salon, a stone's throw from Mucuripe beach in Fortaleza, where Venilda Peluwyer cuts a bang that looks dangerously like Jair Bolsonaro's.
“What the polls say is a lie. Lie! Bolsonaro is going to win in all states”, he says, showing a WhatsApp message that accurately predicts a resounding victory for Bolsonaro.
For Venilda, there is a conspiracy between the big media such as Rede Globo de Río de Janeiro and Folha de São Paulo and the companies that do polls to rig the polls. If Lula wins, it will be due to fraud and the use of an electronic voting system vulnerable to communist hackers. “If electronic ballot boxes are reliable, why don't they use them in the US?”, he asks between scissors.
In reality, the electronic voting system is extremely reliable, and the polls quite reliable as well. Of the polls conducted in the last eight presidential elections in Brazil, six have been correct.
In these elections, therefore, it is very likely that Lula will win in the first or second round. The only poll that does not give a clear victory to the former president is one by Paraná Research, from a week ago, in which Lula leads Bolsonaro by four points. In the rest, the difference is between ten and fifteen points.
But Venilda is not the only Bolsonaro supporter who distrusts the polls. On Thursday, a pollster for Data Folha – a subsidiary of this media outlet – in the state of São Paulo was attacked by a group of Bolsonaristas while doing interviews.
The president feeds this mistrust every day. Interviewed on the conservative channel SBT on Sunday, Bolsonaro said: "If I get less than 60% of the vote, something abnormal happens in the Supreme Electoral Tribunal."
All this raises concerns that a Lula victory will be received by the Bolsonarist base in the style of Donald Trump after the 2020 defeat.
Bolsonaro's statements "point to the repetition in Brazil of what happened in the US, that is, a speech of non-acceptance of the result and agitation of the base to dispute the result," says Issac Luna, a political analyst at the Center Mauricio de Nassau University, from Juazeiro do Norte, in Ceará.
"Historically, Bolsonaro defends arming the civilian population, praises violent solutions and has the support of a large part of the armed institutions of Brazil," he explains. "Of course, if the elections end in the first round, this reaction will be more difficult."
Hence the insistence of the Workers' Party (PT) campaign in encouraging the so-called tactical vote, known in Brazil as the useful vote, that of voters who are not supporters of Lula but who would vote for the former president to close the door to Bolsonaro. Thus, Lula calculates that he can garner the 2.5 million votes necessary to increase his advantage in the polls to the 51% necessary to win in the first round.
The search for the useful vote requires that the historical party of the Brazilian left move even more towards the center. Lula has already chosen the conservative Geraldo Alckmin as his vice-presidential candidate, who a few years ago led the campaign to criminalize the Workers' Party (PT). This week, Lula proposed veteran former central bank president and conservative economist Henrique Meirelles to head the finance ministry. All to close ranks with the establishment and attract those tactical votes.
At the same time, various conservative politicians –previously viscerally opposed to the PT– have announced that they will vote for Lula in order to defeat Bolsonaro in the first round. Incredibly, these include Miguel Reale Junior, the author of the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, removed from the presidency exactly six years ago for a fiscal crime that –it is already recognized– she did not commit.
Former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, another supporter of what many described as a parliamentary coup against Rousseff, has asked Lula for a useful vote. The columnists of the establishment newspapers, such as O Globo, who four years ago coordinated the media campaign against the PT, mobilized public opinion in favor of impeachment and paved the way for Lula's imprisonment, now ask for a useful vote as well.
The obstacle to Lula's victory in the first round are other presidential candidates, especially the liberal Simone Tebet, with 5% of the intention to vote, and the tireless center-left nationalist Ciro Gomes, who has 7% of the intention. of vote.
Gomes –former governor of the state of Ceará and former mayor of Fortaleza– would be, in theory, the perfect candidate for a transfer of votes to Lula. He represents the democratic labor party PDT, founded by the historic leader of the left Leonel Brizola, and a historic ally of the PT. He has an economic program that passes the PT to the left in areas such as combating the power of the banking system. He has been a PT candidate in Ceará and was a minister in the first Lula government.
Unlike many politicians who now ask for a useful vote in favor of Lula, Gomes has always described Rousseff's dismissal as a coup that has done irreparable damage to Brazilian democracy.
Gomes has had the support of great figures on the left such as the singer Caetano Veloso and the Harvard philosopher Roberto Mangabeira Unger. He is supported by David Miranda, partner of the American journalist Glenn Greenwald, whose medium, The Intercept, uncovered the irregularities committed by the judges and prosecutors in the trial against Lula.
Moreover, Gomes understands very well like few others the danger posed by the infiltration of Bolsonarism in the police and military forces. His brother Cid Gomes, a senator from Ceará, was shot in 2021 during a revolt by Bolsonaro police.
But far from sacrificing himself, Gomes says he will fight for every vote. "The useful vote does not make sense in a two-round electoral system," Gomes responds to pressure from the PT to withdraw and invite his followers to tactically vote for Lula
"It's surreal to see a leftist party trying to obstruct political debate," Walber Agra, Gomes' lawyer in Ceará, said in an interview in Fortaleza last week. "The more political discussion, the greater the legitimacy of the process and the greater the obstacles to a coup."
To further complicate this complex debate on democracy that arises within an epic electoral campaign, several groups on the right have shown solidarity with Gomes. Renan Santos, national coordinator of the ultra-conservative Movement for Free Brazil –one of the promoters of the enormous citizen movement against Rousseff and Lula that emerged in 2013–, has denounced “a campaign to elect Lula in the first round that already includes the press, the influencers, political parties and artists. The main target of this campaign is Ciro Gomes. Even Faria Lima Street (elite area of São Paulo) has signed up for it”.
For Bolsonaro voters, however, the battle between the PT and Ciro Gomes is a distraction. There will be no second round even if all of Ciro Gomes' votes go to Lula. Why? "Because Bolsonaro is going to win in the first round," answers Venilda, while giving the last snip to the bangs.
