Osacio's Empty Factories and 33 Million Missing Voters Shape Brazil's Final Vote

Osasco, a municipality on São Paulo's western edge, once turned out metal, chemical and textile goods. Gilberto Almazan, who leads a metalworkers' union there, counts what replaced them: five shopping malls, plus delivery app companies. The city is now nicknamed São Paulo's "Silicon Valley." Osasco voted for Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2022 and swung to Flávio Bolsonaro in the first round this month.

That swing is one piece of a larger change in how Brazilians earn money. Almazan says the working class is no longer mainly industrial. He calls the trend "Uber-isation": drivers, food couriers, small traders. He says many of those workers want control over their hours rather than the welfare programs and collective bargaining that have defined Lula's politics. Richard Lapper, who has written biographies of both Lula and Jair Bolsonaro, says Brazil industrialised late and deindustrialised early, which sharpened the effect. He calls Lula a "victim of his own success."

The conditions on the ground cut against that reading. Unemployment sits at a record low. Brazil came off the UN's Hunger Map during Lula's current presidency. Lapper describes a gap between results and sentiment: prices, household debt and interest rates have risen. Robson, a 53-year-old civil servant who grew up backing Lula, blames "mismanagement" for the tax load he carries. Tairine, who sells hot dogs and used to abstain, now plans to vote for Bolsonaro and says nothing has changed since Lula returned to office. Gisele Bonfim, who voted for Lula in 2022, says Bolsonaro offers "the hope of change."

Flávio Bolsonaro has proposed cutting government spending, ministries and some taxes, and says he would keep parts of Lula's welfare programs. He faces corruption accusations that he denies. The first round produced 33 million people who did not vote, the highest abstention since 1998. Every first-round winner since 1989 has gone on to win the presidency.

Lula's campaign has answered with rallies. It says one in São Paulo drew about a million people, and aerial footage of the crowd circulated widely online. Lula, 80, has used social media to push back on questions about his age, calling himself the "king of selfies."

In Maré, one of Rio's largest favelas, abstention ran above average and Lula still carried the area. Vitoria, an 18-year-old mother earning under £300 a month, points to the minimum wage increase, two days off for workers and free essential medicines. She questions Bolsonaro's plan to label the gang Comando Vermelho a terrorist organisation, recalling last year's police raids in Rio that killed more than 130 people. Andreza Dionísio, a Maré resident, blames last-minute polling station changes and "a sense of hopelessness about the future" for the low turnout.

About a quarter of Brazilians attend evangelical churches, and those congregations have expanded into childcare, employment advice and food. Pastor Silas Malafaia, under investigation for allegedly obstructing the coup trial of Jair Bolsonaro and who calls the probe politically motivated, says Flávio Bolsonaro shares the church's positions on family and abortion.

The run-off is set for Sunday, Oct. 26. Lula's campaign is mobilising hundreds of thousands of people, particularly students, for street rallies. Almazan, the Osasco union leader, says of the candidate who built his career on that movement: "There will never be another Lula."