Brazilian Senator Flavio Bolsonaro pledged on Friday to deliver a 200 billion real ($39.49 billion) fiscal adjustment in the federal budget if he wins the presidency, and he rejected media reports that his campaign was weighing cuts to social spending. Bolsonaro, the eldest son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, will face leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in a runoff on October 25 and leads in most polls. He made the commitments in an interview with Brazil’s most-watched evening newscast.
The denials were specific. Bolsonaro dismissed proposals that reports attributed to his campaign: halting real increases in the minimum wage, eliminating automatic adjustments to social benefits and reducing mandatory social expenditure. Such commitments are politically sensitive in Brazil. “There has been a lot of fake news circulating,” Bolsonaro said, calling the interview an important moment to set the record straight.
Instead, he said, the savings would come from three places: eliminating ministries, tackling mismanagement at state-controlled companies and selling or leasing federal real estate. He gave no breakdown of how much each source would yield or over what period the 200 billion reais would be reached. He also said he would not try to reverse a constitutional amendment approved on Wednesday that shortens Brazil’s working week from six days to five.
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The fiscal case he is making rests on a figure his campaign cites often. Brazil’s gross debt has risen more than 10 percentage points during Lula’s term, to 82.9% of gross domestic product. Long-term interest rates, by contrast, have fallen since Bolsonaro’s first-round victory on October 4.
That first round was closer than the polls had suggested and ran against the incumbent. According to the Superior Electoral Court’s count of every ballot, Bolsonaro took 47.03% of valid votes, about 56.1 million, ahead of Lula at 45.16%, about 53.8 million. Neither passed the 50% needed to win outright, so the two advanced. Third place went to the writer Augusto Cury, who reportedly threw his support to Bolsonaro after the vote.
Polls since then show a narrow Bolsonaro edge that mostly sits within the margins of error. The Eastern Updates set the published surveys side by side. Datafolha, polling in person on October 6 and 7, found Bolsonaro at 49% and Lula at 45%. Quaest, surveying 2,154 people from October 10 to 13, put it at 46% to 44%, a technical tie given its margin of plus or minus two points, with 9% saying they would cast a blank or null ballot or stay home. Two other pollsters showed larger leads for Bolsonaro, including a 53%-to-47% result from PoderData and Aya and 52.7% to 47.3% of valid votes from Ipespe. Before the first round, the picture was reversed. In a Datafolha poll released on October 1, Lula led 48% to 45% in a simulated runoff and 42% to 38% in a first-round scenario, with Cury, Ronaldo Caiado and Renan Santos each in single digits. That is the opposite of what the ballots showed three days later.
The runoff campaign has drawn new allies. On October 7, members of Brazil’s Republicans party announced the party’s support for Bolsonaro’s candidacy at a meeting in Brasilia. Earlier polling had shown how close the race was before the first round: a Quaest survey around September 7 found Lula and Bolsonaro tied at 41% in a runoff scenario, and a Nexus poll in the same week had Bolsonaro at 46% to Lula’s 45%.
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The family history is part of the campaign backdrop. Jair Bolsonaro is serving a 27-year prison sentence for attempting to overturn his 2022 election defeat to Lula, who is seeking a fourth nonconsecutive term. Bolsonaro, who runs for the Liberal Party, used the interview to pair two promises: a fiscal adjustment of 200 billion reais and an assurance that the social spending commitments reports had linked to his campaign are not on the table.
Both campaigns are seeking the support of voters whose first-round candidates were eliminated, since the first round separated the two leaders by less than two percentage points. Brazil’s rules require more than 50% of valid votes to win outright, and the runoff on October 25 will decide the presidency.
The currency conversion in this dispatch uses a rate of 5.0648 reais to the dollar.
