How did Brazil's Flavio Bolsonaro pull off a first-round lead?

SAO PAULO, (Brazil): Flavio Bolsonaro was seen as a less charismatic version of his firebrand father, jailed former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, yet still came out on top in the first round of the election.

The right-wing senator received 47 per cent of the vote compared with 45 per cent for leftist incumbent Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

AFP looks at the reasons behind the shock first-round lead making Flavio Bolsonaro, 45, a favorite to win the October 25 runoff.

- Household name -

Jair Bolsonaro chose his eldest son to lead the family's political project after the ex-leader was convicted of coup-plotting and barred from running for office until 2030.

Flavio Bolsonaro was a little-known senator up until that moment and had never expressed any presidential ambitions.

He essentially embraced his father's shadow on the campaign trail.

"I know I look like him. But it's hard to compare Pele's son to Pele," he said at a Rio de Janeiro rally, in reference to the world-famous football star.

"People like Flavio for his father's ideas," former farmer and migrant to Sao Paulo state Marcio Braga told AFP.

"Even with the patriarch in prison, stripped of voting rights and absent from public appearances, the Bolsonaro name still carries weight," said Marcio Malta, a political scientist and professor at the Fluminense Federal University.

The younger Bolsonaro even managed to secure more votes in the first round than his father did in the first round of his 2018 and 2022 election bids.

- 'Thirst for change' -

Around 50 per cent of Brazilians disapprove of the current Lula administration, polls show.

Rising prices and insecurity have done significant damage to the government's image throughout Brazilian society, which is highly polarized and hankering for change.

Oscarina de Oliveira, a 62-year-old caregiver, told AFP she had planned to vote for Lula, as she always has.

But "when I got there, I switched to Bolsonaro. Just to see what happens, to see if anything changes."

Lula's Workers' Party also took severe hits in Congress, with Bolsonaro's Liberal Party becoming the dominant force in both houses.

The result "didn't surprise me, because the Brazilian people have a thirst for change," said retired businesswoman Lucia Barros, 72, in Brasilia.

- 'Orange wave' -

Sunday's result is cause for celebration among right-wing forces across Latin America, already buoyed by support from US President Donald Trump.

In what has been termed an "orange wave" in reference to Trump's skin tone, not a single regional US ally in the region has lost an election since he returned to the White House last year.

Washington-aligned figures have recently taken office in Colombia, Chile and Peru, all pledging to grant freedoms they say have been repressed by the political left.

Brazil "is moving toward a similar agenda" to that of Trump's, both economically and in terms of security, Eduardo Grin of the Getulio Vargas Foundation told AFP.

Flavio Bolsonaro has styled himself as a "moderate" version of his father, an enthusiastic Trump ally.

- Corruption crisis -

A massive scandal with a disgraced banker charged with fraud at its center dominated the election campaign.

Flavio Bolsonaro's relations with Daniel Vorcaro initially caused him problems when it emerged that he had asked the banker to finance a biopic about his father.

But even Lula's campaign has conceded that Flavio Bolsonaro benefited from the scandal, which also drew in Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes, who presided over Jair Bolsonaro's coup trial.

"Let's turn the page. Enough with corruption," said 49-year-old Bolsonaro voter Eduardo Linhares.

Without the Supreme Court's recent woes, "the Bolsonaro camp's victory would have been less sweeping," said political analyst Thomas Traumann.

Experts largely agree the right-wing candidate managed to shift attention away from his own implications in the crisis to the court and to the government.

Renan Santos, a candidate eliminated in the first round, on Monday called Flavio Bolsonaro a "corrupt" man who prevailed "by relying on structural machinery and on his surname." — AFP