SÃO PAULO—Brazilians cast their ballots Sunday in one of the most tense presidential elections in decades, with President
Jair Bolsonaro
forecast in polls to lose to his predecessor,
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva,
in a vote that would consolidate a shift to the left in South America.
Mr. da Silva, a former president and longtime standard-bearer for the Latin American left who was jailed for corruption in 2018 and 2019, was expected to get at least 50% of the vote, according to Datafolha and Ipec polls late Saturday, enough to clinch a first-round victory.
Though 11 candidates are running for president in the world’s fourth-largest democracy, the vote has emerged as a deeply polarized battle between Mr. Bolsonaro, who has fewer than 40% support in most polls, and Mr. da Silva. If neither gets more than half of the votes, the election goes to a runoff vote on Oct. 30.
A victory by Mr. da Silva in Brazil, home to 215 million people, would mean that every major country in South America, from Argentina to Venezuela, would be led by a leftist government.
Gustavo Petro,
a former leftist guerrilla, won office in Colombia in June, and a former student-protest leader,
Gabriel Boric,
took office in Chile in March. If Mr. Bolsonaro loses, it would also be the first time since the early 1990s that an elected president in Brazil has failed to win a second term.
Eliane Perreira Silva, 41 years old, who owns a small food store in Paraisópolis, a poor community in São Paulo, remembered how Mr. da Silva, who served two terms through 2010, showered the country’s poor with aid.
“Lula helped so many people when he was president before, people who were going hungry, people who didn’t even have access to clean water,” she said. “He has a good heart.”
Sunday’s vote comes after one of the most violent election seasons since the country emerged from a military dictatorship…
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