How Brazil's changing working class is reshaping the presidential race

How Brazil's changing working class is reshaping the presidential race

In the vast former industrial city of Osasco, closed factories have been replaced by shopping malls and delivery app tech firms in what is now known as São Paulo's "Silicon Valley."

The municipality backed Brazil's left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2022, but in the first round of Brazil's presidential election this month it switched to the right-wing Flávio Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro won that round - and now the two men will face a run-off on Sunday. Since 1989, every first-round winner has gone on to become president.

Like many of President Lula's longtime supporters, Gilberto Almazan, who heads a metalworkers' union here, is clearly anxious.

He cries as he recounts Lula's life story: a boy raised in hunger in the north-east, who became a metalworker, then a union leader, then a three-time president. But he is frank about how much has changed here and how the union movement that was so central to Lula's support base is stuck in the "Middle Ages", struggling to keep pace.

"We had strong deindustrialisation here," Almazan says. "The profile of the working class changed. They are no longer predominantly industrial workers, they are service workers.

"Metal, chemical, textile factories disappeared. And five malls were built."

The word "change" is repeated often among Bolsonaro supporters here. Many cannot point to specific Bolsonaro policies they admire, but they know they want something different: they are frustrated by the economy, crime and corruption in politics - even though Flávio has also faced accusations of corruption, which he denies.

"He brings the hope of change, that we can have a different Brazil," says lawyer Gisele Bonfim in Osasco, who chose to vote for Bolsonaro after backing Lula in 2022.

Lula's re-election effort has been weakened by voters drifting away from him. In some cases, that frustration led to abstention, which was higher than average this year, but others like Gisele actively wanted something new.

A major reason is that Brazil's working class has changed dramatically in places like Osasco.

Near one large shopping mall is an open-air market where this shift is easy to see. Everyone is promoting products, with a portable card machine in hand.

Tairine, who sells hot dogs, used to abstain from voting, even though - as voting is compulsory in Brazil - failing to go to the polls brings a fine. This year, she plans to vote for Bolsonaro. She points to the high taxes she pays on "everything" she buys and says they make it "so difficult for a poor person" coping with inflation, arguing that "nothing has changed" since Lula returned to the presidency.

Flávio Bolsonaro has proposed reducing government spending, government ministries and some taxes - though he has said he would keep some of Lula's flagship welfare programmes.

For his supporters, Lula is a working-class hero credited with improving workers' rights through strike organising and lifting millions out of poverty with generous social welfare programmes while president.

But across Brazil, millions now work in the gig economy, a trend Almazan calls "Uber-isation": driving for Uber, delivering food, or running small businesses from market stalls to offering beauty treatments at home.

"There are a lot of workers who need more freedom, flexibility of days and hours," he says, rather than the welfare and collective action Lula offered.

Richard Lapper, who has written biographies of both Lula and Jair Bolsonaro - Flavio's father who was president from 2019-2022 - says the rise of individualised work and the decline of manufacturing driven by globalisation are not unique to Brazil. But because Brazil industrialised late and deindustrialised early, he argues, the impact has been sharper here. He calls Lula a "victim of his own success."

Unemployment fell to a record low, and Brazil was removed from the United Nation's Hunger Map during Lula's current presidency. But Lapper describes a crisis of "expectations" in which people are now better off but do not feel it because prices have risen and household debt and interest rates are high.

Robson, 53, is a municipal civil servant in Osasco. Originally from Lula's north-eastern home state of Pernambuco, he grew up supporting him.

But he describes a country now running deficits and says its citizens are enduring the "worst phase" of its tax burden, which he blames on the Lula government's "mismanagement" of the economy and high public spending.

"Now you have to make choices: pay an instalment for your car, or put food on the table," he says.

In some places, Lula lost votes compared with 2022, even though Bolsonaro did not increase his tally beyond what his father achieved then: 33 million people did not vote in the first round, the highest abstention since 1998.

In response, Lula's campaign has concentrated on mobilising hundreds of thousands of people - especially students - onto the streets to drive turnout for round two. It says one rally in São Paulo drew about a million people.

"A lot of people didn't vote, they thought it wouldn't change anything," says one supporter, Leila. "Our fight is to make those people believe their vote changes things."

Aerial footage of these massive demonstrations has been spread widely across social media. An image of a topless man with a six-pack waving a Lula flag at one has been shared tens of millions of times.

The strategy is that their revolution will not be televised, but it should ideally go viral.

Lula, 80, has also been using social media to brush off claims that he is past his peak: calling himself the "king of selfies" and posting videos of himself running from A to B on the campaign trail.

In Maré, one of Rio's largest favelas, controlled by rival gangs, abstention was above average.

That hurt Lula's support, even though he still won there: among Brazil's very poorest, Lula's welfare policies clearly still resonate. One 18-year-old mother in Maré, Vitoria, earns less than £300 a month and praises Lula's government for raising the minimum wage, giving workers the right to two days off, and providing essential medicines for free.

She is doubtful about Bolsonaro's plan to label the gang controlling this part of the favela, Comando Vermelho, a terrorist organisation, which he lobbied the US to do earlier this year.

She believes it would lead authorities to enter the favela to "kill, destroy, ruin families, leave blood and bodies on the ground", citing a police raid in Rio last year that killed more than 130 people.

Another resident, Andreza Dionísio, blames the high abstention rates here on both last-minute changes to polling station locations and "a sense of hopelessness about the future."

Increasingly, that lack of hope is being filled by the growth of the evangelical church: about a quarter of Brazilians are now evangelical. Its mega-churches provide not only a spiritual home but also help with issues such as childcare, employment advice and even food.

Its conservative pastors are among Brazil's most influential political operators.

Silas Malafaia, who has millions of followers on social media, leads the Assembleia de Deus Vitória em Cristo, based in the lower middle-class neighbourhood of Penha in Rio de Janeiro. He is being investigated for allegedly obstructing the coup trial of Jair Bolsonaro, which he denies and says is politically motivated.

At one two-hour sermon he delivers messages of self-improvement to an emotional crowd of hundreds, with occasional live music interludes and breaks to collect money using card machines. The entire event is live-streamed on YouTube.

Afterwards, in his office decorated with a photo of him and former president Jair Bolsonaro, at whose wedding he officiated, he told the BBC that without the evangelical church in working-class neighbourhoods the country would be "in a state worse than you can imagine".

"It gives these people meaning. To better their lives."

He says Flávio Bolsonaro shares the church's values: for family, and against gender "ideology" and abortion.

The church is pushing some people to actively vote for Flávio Bolsonaro, but for much of Brazil's new working class, the first round feels more like a rejection of President Lula than an endorsement of his opponent.

"There will never be another Lula," Gilberto Almazan fears. He means this as praise, but Brazil's changing world of work means it is also probably true.

While Lula's past still moves people like Almazan deeply, his political future may depend on whether voters believe he can now offer Brazil a new one.