Latin Americas conservative shift faces its biggest test yet in Brazil election

SÃO PAULO: As Brazil goes to the polls Sunday, analysts are watching closely to see whether the continents most populous nation will be the latest domino to fall into the conservative column, following Colombia, Peru, Chile, and others in voting out the left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Known by his nickname Lula, the 80-year-old, who served time in jail for corruption in a massive payback , barely leads Brazilian senator Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of former president Jair.

Going into Sundays first round, neither candidate is expected to win outright. The latest Datafolha poll puts Lula at 42% and Bolsonaro at 38%, with a two-point margin of error. If the election goes to a runoff, it has Lula up by 3%. But the polls have been wrong before.

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"The problem with Datafolha, which is the largest polling institute in the country, is that it tends to underestimate the force and voting intention in candidates running against Lula or the Workers Party (PT). This has been consistent for at least over a decade, and it underestimated Jair Bolsonaros number on the runoff of 2018 by 7%," Roberto Reis, an electoral strategist working with several candidates across multiple electoral tiers and analyzing aggregator data, told Fox News Digital. "According to the latest aggregator data such as MRT News or Polling Data, we currently have Lula leading Bolsonaro 42% to 39% on the first runoff of the elections with Bolsonaro leading Lula 45% to 44% on the runoff," he added.

One Brazil analyst said that the election is about more than just another ideological contest between left and right in Latin America — It is the single major remaining stumbling block in the Western Hemisphere that still hasnt shifted to conservativism and while there are other left-wing governments in the hemisphere, including Cuba, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua and Uruguay, Brazil is by far the largest and most important economy in this group with its status as the 11th largest world economy according to the IMF and the 10th largest world economy according to the World Bank.

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Bolsonaro has spent much of the campaign cultivating a relationship with President Donald Trump and presenting himself as a potential U.S. partner in the Western Hemisphere. He met Trump at the White House in May, where the two discussed organized crime, tariffs and Brazil's rare earth and critical mineral reserves — both critical prime-source materials Brazil has plenty of and which could significantly lower U.S. and European dependency on Russia and China.

Bolsonaro also said he had asked Washington to designate Brazil's two largest criminal organizations, the First Capital Command (PCC, in its Portuguese acronym) and Red Command (Comando Vermelho, in Portuguese), as terrorist groups. Both designations were accepted by the Department of State on May 28 and became effective in June under section 219 of the Immigration and Naturalization Code.

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