Presidential runoff under way in Brazil

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AI GeneratedBrazil is experiencing one of its most contentious and closest presidential elections in four decades. The race between Lula and Flavio Bolsonaro is marked by legal battles over social media influence, high-stakes televised debates, and shifting public sentiment, leaving the final outcome uncertain as the nation awaits the counting of the votes.
Well, let's cross to Rio de Janeiro.
Our correspondent, Janosko, is standing by for us.
Jan, set the scene for us.
What's the mood like there at the moment?
Well, pretty much everybody here in Brazil
is on tenterhooks for the outcome
of what is being described as the closest presidential race
since Brazil returned to democracy around 40 years ago.
Not only is it the closest race,
it's also been one of the most acrimonious.
After his first round defeat, Lula's campaigners launched
a WhatsApp channel called Lula's Army
that's got more than 10 million followers
but that was suspended briefly twice after legal
challenges from Flavio Bolsonaro's campaign alleging it
was spreading fake news and also
saying that it wasn't officially linked
to Lula's campaign. Now for their part, Lula's campaign also
launched a legal challenge against the U.S. tech giant Meta,
alleging that its algorithms were
favoring Flavio Bolsonaro's campaign.
Now, as to which of these two candidates will win, it's very
difficult to say. Most pollsters are saying
that Flavio Bolsonaro has the slight edge, although
Lula has certainly gained ground on him over these last three weeks.
Having said that, they got the
predictions for the first round completely wrong.
So nobody is really putting too much trust into
what they're saying.
So Jan, we saw Bolsonaro coming on top in the first round. Has anything
changed since then to turn that around?
Certainly been plenty of action, plenty of campaigning in
these last three weeks. We've
also had two live debates on television between the two presidential
candidates. The last one was on Friday night.
And according to Globo, which broadcasts that
particular debate. The ratings were similar
to those for Brazil's World Cup matches. In fact,
one survey said that around 54% of the population tuned
in for that debate. Interesting to contrast
that statistic with the fact that 21%
of Brazil's electorate didn't even bother voting in the first
round, which is a huge percentage
when you think that voting here in Brazil is actually compulsory.
Now, whether this debate has made a difference
and they're actually going to come out and vote
we will find out later on today another development has
been the passing of a law through the Senate
which now limits Brazil's working week to just 40 hours
that's seen as a victory for Lula. It's
certainly good news for ordinary workers
but perhaps it's not such good news if you're a small
business owner and it will possibly lead to your overheads
also going up and another development
is that Flavio Bolsonaro has come under investigation yet again
for alleged money laundering
in relation to a friend of his and a businessman called Willa Tomais.
Now, that just hit the headlines about a week ago,
so it'll be interesting to see what difference
that might make to his vote.
Brazilians have just under seven hours left to come
to the polling stations like this one behind me
and to cast their vote, and then after that, the counting will begin.
All right, Jan, we will, of course,
be keeping a close eye on that throughout the day
and we'll check in with you later in the day, but for now, thank you.
