00:00And to go deep into this topic, we go live now to Rio de Janeiro with our special envoy Belén
00:05de los Santos
00:06as the run-off election is aside on October 25th.
00:12Go ahead, Bel, what do you have for us at this hour?
00:18Hello, Vale, how are you? Exactly as you were saying, well, you were mentioning a lot of the points,
00:23a lot of what this election process has left us and has left this analysis
00:27for what comes next when we look towards October 25th.
00:31So we have a run-off coming and the main point of discussion will be
00:36how many votes of those who did not go to either Lula da Silva or Flavia Bolsonaro,
00:42how many of them are they going to be able to manage into their own spaces
00:48in order to go to a very tight race?
00:51Let's recall that in 2022, the final race was also defined by a minimum percentage point.
00:58And that is probably going to be the case as well.
01:02Even though last night the difference was very high at the beginning of the night,
01:07that gap started closing and was left at about a little bit below two percentage points.
01:14That means that it's in those 2.2 million votes of difference that the election in total will be debated
01:22and will be won.
01:23Where are those votes coming from?
01:26Well, there was some speculation regarding of how many votes of those who did not attend the election altogether,
01:31around 33 million people who could have voted and did not,
01:36how many of those can be targeted in order to convince them to participate in this election?
01:42Well, definitely that will be one of the strategies for both campaigns.
01:46But we need to consider that this is around a normal level for a Brazilian election.
01:53That means there was not an increased amount, significant amount of voters who could have voted normally
02:00and did not do that as a political motivation in this election.
02:04That means that we need to be cautious regarding the margin of those people that can be summoned to this
02:10election.
02:10But, of course, it will be part of the general strategy.
02:14And then we see how many votes can be gained from the other candidates.
02:21Yes, we're talking about Augusto Curi, about Renan Santos.
02:25Yes, Ruedo Callado as well.
02:27How many of those, the three candidates that came after the leading two,
02:31that make up a total of around 8.5, 8.6 million votes,
02:37that is where the key will probably be.
02:40And, of course, now comes the game of the alliances
02:43and how the different parties are going to try to approach the voters of those main parties.
02:51What we need to say is, for example,
02:53Augusto Curi today decided and announced that he would not just openly endorse either of the candidates.
03:00That is maybe one of the voters that are up for dispute and up for grabs.
03:07It's a candidate that has defined himself earlier in this presidential race as somewhat of a centrist.
03:14He has said that he was a capitalist with a socialist heart.
03:19So, playing a little bit into both sides.
03:22And, of course, both campaigns are going to try to capitalize on that
03:26and bring as many votes as possible.
03:28So, he did not endorse any team and it will be for those campaigns to really appeal to those voters.
03:36I think that will be key.
03:38Estimates, of course, will add up in terms of math that many of those are right-leaning
03:45and so it's closer in terms of political ideology that those voters would go to Flavia Bolsonaro rather than Lula.
03:53That is a very superficial approach.
03:55But, we also need to keep in mind that some analysts are suggesting that many of those votes that could
04:02have gone to Flavia Bolsonaro
04:03have already gone to Flavia Bolsonaro.
04:06And, that explains the increase he has from the polls to the final result of this election.
04:12So, are those voters closer to going to that side or can they be gained for Lula da Silva?
04:19That is basically the question and that we'll see what it unfolds in the weeks to come.
04:25Ben, also, Rio de Janeiro has been a key political stronghold for Bolsonaro.
04:32What are you hearing from voters regarding what will matter the most in the run-off election for them?
04:44Well, I think that it's clear now that the campaign, the election, it's marked by polarization,
04:49it's marked by an important divide of society that is now typical here in Brazil,
04:55but we also need to think about this as a regional phenomenon, maybe even a Western phenomenon.
05:01So, there is a lot of that divide when we speak to people as well.
05:06We're actually here up getting reactions after the election.
05:10And, of course, we have people that are very shocked with the results, very sad, very depressed,
05:15but willing to do whatever it takes in order to get with the best position possible to that October 25th
05:22mark.
05:23And, there are other people that, of course, are glad, are happy, are happily surprised.
05:28So, whoever we talk to and the impressions they get tend to fall directly into that polarization
05:36that tends to explain what is happening.
05:38There's also an important amount of people that are signaling, as we were saying,
05:42that neither would be the best candidate for them,
05:46but they chose to participate in that sort of, like, advanced run-off in this way.
05:51What is clear for all strategies regarding what you were saying is
05:56they will need to appeal to the basic issues of concern for the voters themselves.
06:04In Rio de Janeiro, for example, security is and has been always a present issue
06:09because it involves directly the life of the people
06:13and the possibility of talking directly to that concern,
06:17of offering true and real solutions or possibility of solutions,
06:22the problem with indebtedness, the cost of living,
06:26the everything that has to do with everyday life campaigns.
06:30We really need to go and target that.
06:32We saw some of that in the final weeks of Lula's campaign
06:37that were very well received, for example,
06:40with the prohibition of bets and the correlation with household income.
06:44So we're definitely going to see if here in Rio de Janeiro and across the country
06:49they can capitalize on that and continue on that trend
06:53in order to get as many voters to mobilize as possible.
06:58Thank you. Thank you very much for your latest information.
07:03We're going to keep, of course, in contact to get into what is happening in Rio de Janeiro
07:09ahead of the October 25th round of election.
07:15Of course, Ale.
