Lula's party takes to Brazilian streets with the polls still tied

The party of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva called supporters into the main cities of Brazil on Sunday, 13 September, with national polls showing him roughly level with Senator Flávio Bolsonaro heading toward a possible second round. Lula is running for re-election. Flávio is the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is barred from this race. The street events are a campaign instrument, not a vote. They are how the Workers' Party tests turnout machinery while the numbers are still flat.

Brazil's election calendar runs through the Southern Hemisphere spring. A first-round tie or near-tie sends the top two names to a runoff. That is the scenario the current surveys describe. Lula's camp wants visible crowds to argue that the tie is soft and that organised labour and social movements can still move the last points. The Bolsonaro camp will treat empty or modest squares as proof of fatigue after Lula's current term.

Why Flávio is the name on the poster

Jair Bolsonaro's ineligibility left the family brand in the Senate. Flávio inherited the voters who want a restoration, not a new right-wing experiment. That makes the race a rematch in all but the legal sense. Lula's first two terms and his return to the Planalto already structured Brazilian politics around one personal rivalry. Sunday's marches exist because that rivalry did not end when one of the two men was ruled out.

A separate report this week said a group linked to U.S. Senator J.D. Vance had courted a Brazilian opposition candidate with a plan built around rare earths and a harder line on China. That track, if confirmed in primary documents, sits beside the street campaign rather than inside it. Voters on Avenida Paulista will not be holding rare-earth briefing notes. They will be holding flags.

What a Sunday crowd can and cannot do

Brazilian campaign Sundays are theatre with a turnout function. They tell local organisers who still answers a call. They do not replace the first-round arithmetic. If the tie in the surveys is real, the second round will be decided by the voters who stay home today and come out in the runoff. Lula's party is trying to shrink that group. The opposing machine will do the same on a different weekend.

Lula remains the incumbent with the advantages and the drag that come with the office. Flávio remains a senator with a surname that does not need an introduction. The polls say those two facts currently cancel. The squares on 13 September are the PT's attempt to un-cancel them in public, in daylight, before the next survey drops.