How Brazil's changing working class is reshaping the presidential race

ByIone Wells Reporting fromSão Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

Key points

• Unemployment fell to a record low, and Brazil was taken off the United Nation's Hunger Map during Lula's current presidency.
• "He brings the hope of change, that we can have a different Brazil, " notes lawyer Gisele Bonfim in Osasco.
• This dented Lula's backing, even though he still won here: among Brazil's highly poorest, Lula's welfare initiatives clearly do still resonate.
• She is sceptical of Bolsonaro's intends to designate the gang which controls this part of the favela, Comando Vermelho, as a terrorist organisation.
• Like plenty of of President Lula's traditional supporters, Gilberto Almazan.

In the sprawling former industrial city of Osasco, shuttered factories have given way to a shopping malls and delivery app tech firms in what is now dubbed São Paulo's "Silicon Valley."

For context, the municipality voted for Brazil's left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2022 but switched to the right-wing Flávio Bolsonaro in the first round of Brazil's presidential election this month. Bolsonaro won that vote – and now the two men face a run-off on Sunday. Since 1989, every first-round winner has gone on to be elected president.

Like plenty of of President Lula's traditional supporters, Gilberto Almazan. This person leads a metalworkers' union here, is visibly worried.

He cries when he tells Lula's life story: a boy who grew up in hunger in the north-east. This person became a metalworker, then a union leader, then a three-time president. But he's candid regarding how things have changed here and how the union movement that was so integral to Lula's backing base is stuck in the "Middle Ages", and struggling to keep up.

We had strong deindustrialisation here, Almazan notes. The profile of the working class changed. They are no longer predominantly industrial workers, they are service workers. Metal, chemical, textile factories disappeared. And five malls were built.

Notably, the word "change" comes up repeatedly among Bolsonaro supporters here. Plenty of struggle to name specific Bolsonaro policies they like but know they want to try something different: frustrated by the economy, crime and corruption in politics – even though Flávio has been faced accusations of corruption too. It he denies.

"He brings the hope of change, that we can have a different Brazil, " notes lawyer Gisele Bonfim in Osasco. This person decided to vote for Bolsonaro after supporting Lula in 2022.

Lula's re-election campaign has been hampered by voters turning away from him. In some cases, their frustration drove abstention. It was higher than average this year, but others like Gisele actively wanted something new.

One major reason for that is Brazil's working class has transformed seismically in places like Osasco.

Near one sizeable shopping mall lies an open-air market where this shift is noticeable. Everyone is touting products, armed with a portable card machine.

Tairine, who sells hot dogs, applied to abstain from voting, even though – as voting is compulsory in Brazil – not going to the polls incurs a fine. This year, she intends to vote for Bolsonaro. She points to high taxes paid on "everything" she buys and notes these produce it "so difficult for a poor person" dealing with inflation, arguing "nothing has changed" since Lula became president again.

Flávio Bolsonaro has proposed cutting administration spending, administration ministries, and some taxes – though he has noted he'd maintain some of Lula's flagship welfare programmes. A new working class.

For his supporters, Lula is a working-class hero credited with advancing workers' rights through organising strikes and lifting millions of individuals out of poverty with generous social welfare programmes as president.

But throughout Brazil millions now work in the gig economy, a phenomenon Almazan calls "Uber-isation": driving for Uber, delivering food, or running small businesses from market stalls to providing at-home beauty treatments.

"There are a lot of workers who need more freedom, flexibility of days and hours, " he notes, rather than the welfare and collective action Lula offered.

Richard Lapper, who has written biographies of both Lula and Jair Bolsonaro – Flavio's father who was president from 2019-2022 – notes the rise of individualised work and the decline of manufacturing caused by globalisation are not unique to Brazil. But since Brazil industrialised late and deindustrialised early, he argues, the effects have been sharper here. He calls Lula a "victim of his own success."

Unemployment fell to a record low, and Brazil was taken off the United Nation's Hunger Map during Lula's current presidency. But Lapper describes a crisis of "expectations" where individuals are now better off but don't feel it as rates have risen and household debt and interest rates are high.

Robson, 53, is a municipal civil servant in Osasco. Originally from Lula's north-eastern home state of Pernambuco, he grew up supporting him.

But he describes a country now running deficits and notes its citizens are enduring the "worst phase" of its tax burden. It he blames on the Lula government's "mismanagement" of the economy and high public spending.

"Now you have to make choices: pay an instalment for your car, or put food on the table, " he notes.

In some areas, Lula lost votes compared to 2022, even though Bolsonaro did not gain more than his father did then: 33 million individuals did not vote in the first round, the highest abstention since 1998.

In response, Lula's campaign has focused on mobilising hundreds of thousands of individuals – particularly students – on to the streets to secure the vote out for round two. It claims one rally in São Paulo attracted regarding a million residents.

"A lot of people didn't vote, they thought it wouldn't change anything, " notes one supporter, Leila. "Our fight is to make those people believe their vote changes things."

Aerial videos of these massive demonstrations have been plastered throughout social media. An image of a topless man with a six-pack waving a Lula flag at one has been shared tens of millions of times.

Notably, the strategy is that their revolution will not be televised, but it should ideally go viral.

Lula, 80, has additionally been using social media to dismiss criticisms that he is past his prime: calling himself the "king of selfies" and posting videos showing him running from A to B on the campaign trail.

In Maré, one of Rio's largest favelas which is controlled by rival gangs, abstention was higher than average.

This dented Lula's backing, even though he still won here: among Brazil's highly poorest, Lula's welfare initiatives clearly do still resonate. One 18-year-old mother in Maré, Vitoria, earns less than £300 a month and praises Lula's administration for increasing the minimum wage, giving workers the right to two days off, and providing essential medicines for free.

She is sceptical of Bolsonaro's intends to designate the gang which controls this part of the favela, Comando Vermelho, as a terrorist organisation. It he lobbied the US to do earlier this year.

She thinks it will lead to authorities entering the favela to "kill, destroy, ruin families, leave blood and bodies on the ground", citing a police raid in Rio last year that killed more than 130 individuals.

Another resident, Andreza Dionísio, blames high abstention rates here on both last-minute changes to polling station locations, but additionally "a sense of hopelessness about the future."

Increasingly, that void of hope is being filled by the expansion of the evangelical church: concerning a quarter of Brazilians are now evangelical. Its mega-churches offer not just a spiritual home but backing with matters like childcare, employment advice and even food. Its conservative pastors are some of Brazil's most powerful political operators.

Silas Malafaia, who has millions of followers on social media, leads the Assembleia de Deus Vitória em Cristo headquartered in the lower middle-class neighbourhood of Penha in Rio de Janeiro. He is being investigated for allegedly obstructing the coup trial of Jair Bolsonaro. It he denies and calls politically motivated.

At one two-hour sermon he preaches messages of self-improvement to an emotional crowd of hundreds, interrupted occasionally for live music interludes and breaks to collect funds with card machines. The whole event is live-streamed on YouTube.

Afterwards, in his office adorned with a photo of him and the former president Jair Bolsonaro, at whose wedding he officiated, he informed the BBC that without the evangelical church in working-class neighbourhoods the country would be "in a state worse than you can imagine". "It gives these individuals meaning. To better their lives."

He argues Flávio Bolsonaro shares the church's values: for family, and against gender "ideology" and abortion.

Meanwhile, the church is driving some to actively vote for Flávio Bolsonaro, but among much of Brazil's new working class, the first round feels more like a rejection of President Lula than an endorsement of his rival.

"There will never be another Lula, " Gilberto Almazan fears. He intends this as a compliment, but Brazil's changing world of work means it's additionally probably true.

While Lula's past story still stirs great emotion for individuals like Almazan, his political fate may depend on whether voters think he can now offer Brazil a new one.

For now, how Brazil' s changing working class is reshaping the presidential race remains the part of the story worth watching, and further updates are likely as more details are confirmed.