Brazil's run-off election on October 28 looks likely to be won by Jair Bolsonaro, voter surveys show. He is a far-right, pro-gun candidate who promises tough law-and-order measures and economic reforms.
He leads his leftist rival, Fernando Haddad, who promises to largely uphold policies backed by his Workers Party, known as the PT, when it held power from 2003 to 2016 under president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, now imprisoned, and his successor Dilma Rousseff, who was impeached.
What are the main things behind each candidate's support?
- Bolsonaro: a 'newcomer' -
Bolsonaro surged in the polls to snatch victory in the first round on October 7 after the popular Lula, in prison for corruption, was disqualified from running and Haddad stepped in as a last-minute replacement.
His strong rhetoric vowing to crack down on crime and corruption has resonated with many Brazilians sick of murders, muggings and pervasive graft.
Many interpret the ex-paratrooper's nostalgia for the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil three decades ago -- and his justification of its resort to torture -- more as an inclination to restore order than as outright authoritarianism.
Bolsonaro's "family values" message has won over many Catholic and evangelical believers, who see the candidate as a moral choice.
David Fleischer, a political science professor at Brasilia University, said Bolsonaro has benefited from "a very strong anti-Lula and anti-PT feeling and (the sentiment) that 'all politicians are corrupt; I won't vote to reelect anyone.'"
Despite being a lawmaker for nearly three decades, Bolsonaro is viewed as "a newcomer with a clean record," Fleischer said.
- Haddad: Lula's man -
Haddad himself was not that well-known nationally before the PT tapped him to replace Lula. He had been a mayor of Sao Paulo and education minister in Lula's government.
His main supporters fondly remember the poverty-fighting policies and economic boom under Lula, president from 2003 to 2010. They hope Haddad will bring that back after years of recession and austerity.
Haddad and the PT, said Fleischer, "want to repeat what Lula did as president -- but they ignore all the corruption practiced by Lula and his 'gang.'"
But Haddad is also the default choice for voters chilled by Bolsonaro's record of degrading comments against women, gays and blacks, as well as for those who fear that Bolsonaro's plan to put several ex-generals in his government presages a return to military rule.
Rosa Cardoso, a lawyer who helped lead Brazil's National Truth Commission, which probed the crimes of the 1964-1985 military dictatorship, warned against what she said Bolsonaro represented.
"We are on the road to barbarity: a lack of rules, a lack of law," she said.
"There is a very authoritarian mentality in some people who, when they see criminal acts in the street, they opt for a lynching... They feel like they are represented by someone like Bolsonaro, who puts out that sort of discourse," she told AFP.
- The upshot -
Going into the runoff, Bolsonaro appears to be winning the electoral argument. The last major poll suggested he has 59 percent voter support, against 41 percent for Haddad.
"The voters want change," Fleischer said, noting that Bolsonaro's ultraconservative Social Liberal Party gained the second-highest number of seats in Congress in the October 7 general election.
