Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is broadly considered the favourite to beat right-wing challenger Flávio Bolsonaro, whose campaign has been marred by a feud with his stepmother and links to a banker at the center of a massive financial fraud probe, according to Daniel Carvalho, Martha Beck, and Vinicius Andrade at Bloomberg.
Influential centrist lawmakers are endorsing him. Betting markets give Lula better than 60% odds of reelection, while investors have begun selling off Brazilian assets amid worries about his willingness to tackle ballooning deficits and debt.
Conservatives have surged to power in Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru and Colombia, often with open support from the White House.
Brazil, however, is beginning to look more like Canada and Australia, where Trump’s targeting of ideological opponents helped lift them to election victories instead.