Lula Seeks to Cut Bolsonaro’s Lead in Southern Brazil

(Bloomberg) -- Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is launching an offensive to sway supporters of President Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil’s southern states, the stronghold of the right-wing incumbent.

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The presidential front-runner held a rally on Friday in Porto Alegre, capital of Rio Grande do Sul, before heading to Curitiba, the Parana state capital where he was kept behind bars between 2018 and 2019 in a corruption sentence that was later tossed out by the country’s top court. On Sunday the leftist leader will visit Florianopolis, the capital of Santa Catarina.

“Some people think I hate Curitiba because I was in jail here. I have gratitude for this city, and affection for men and women who spared no effort to keep asking for my freedom in the 580 days I was here,” Lula said at a campaign event Saturday morning in the capital.

Lula has held a comfortable lead in national polls ahead of the Oct. 2 election, but has consistently trailed Bolsonaro in the south -- a relatively wealthier region with an agriculture-based economy and conservative values similar to those sponsored by the former army captain.

Bolsonaro has 42% of voting intentions in the region, compared with 34% for Lula, according to a Datafolha survey released Thursday. That’s in stark contrast with national poll numbers, which show Lula leading with 45% of the votes and the incumbent trailing with 33%. The southern region accounts for 14.4% of Brazil’s electorate.

Read More: Bolsonaro’s Late Push Fails to Win Support, DataFolha Says

The president has consolidated his support in rural Brazilian states by opening foreign markets for agricultural exports, easing rules on gun ownership that made it easier for big farmers to defend their land, and by defanging the once-fearsome Landless Workers’ Movement, a Marxist-inspired group that had sponsored thousands of invasions of unproductive farms across the country.

Read More: Bolsonaro Woos Rural Brazil With Land and Guns to Catch Lula

While claiming “deep respect” for Brazilian farmers, Lula vowed to end with land invasions and illegal mining in the Amazon if he wins October elections. He also stated that the Armed Forces’s role is to take care of national sovereignty, not to monitor the country’s elections.

Lula’s trip doesn’t come without security concerns. Back in 2018, before being arrested and barred from running in the following year’s election, the former president canceled a visit to the region when his bus was shot at while traveling through Parana state. No one got hurt.

(Updates with Lula’s speech in Curitiba in 3rd paragraph)

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