Brazil's election on a knife-edge as Bolsonaro's son challenges Lula

Brazil is entering the final stretch before its 4 October presidential election with polls showing a razor-thin contest between the leftist incumbent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and challenger Flávio Bolsonaro, a far-right senator and son of imprisoned former president Jair Bolsonaro. The elder Bolsonaro was sentenced last September to 27 years in prison for orchestrating an attempted coup after losing the 2022 election to Lula.

Momentum appears to have shifted toward Flávio Bolsonaro's campaign in recent weeks, fueled by corruption scandals involving Lula's son and the supreme court. Crowds of Bolsonaro supporters turned out to greet the senator in Juiz de Fora, a city in Minas Gerais — a state widely regarded as decisive, since no candidate has won the presidency since the 1980s without carrying it.

Juiz de Fora carries symbolic weight for the Bolsonaro movement: it was there that Jair Bolsonaro was stabbed while campaigning in 2018, an attack many believe boosted his eventual victory, and the city's army base launched Brazil's 1964 military coup.

Should Flávio Bolsonaro win, his father and other coup-plot figures could be released from custody. The senator has pledged aggressive anti-crime policing, looser gun laws, five new conservative appointments to Brazil's 11-seat supreme court, chemical castration for rapists, and a lower age of criminal responsibility.

On Friday, it emerged that Flávio Bolsonaro himself is under police investigation over alleged corruption tied to financing a biopic about the 2018 assassination attempt on his father. Analysts describe the race as a coin flip that could be decided by a late-breaking scandal. The campaign has exposed deep divisions, with supporters celebrating a potential return to power and opponents expressing alarm over the prospect of what one activist called a repeat of Jair Bolsonaro's presidency.