It felt like doomsday for the Brazilian left. On Oct. 4, Flávio Bolsonaro, the right-wing presidential candidate, outperformed polls and edged ahead of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a leftist.
The narrow margin was not enough to avoid a runoff on Sunday between the two candidates, but it was plenty to set off hand-wringing and soul-searching across progressive bubbles in big cities like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, and a reorganization in Mr. Lula’s campaign.
A visit to Nanuque, a cattle-raising, churchgoing town 500 miles north of Rio de Janeiro, where crowds turn out on foot for an annual march for Jesus and on horseback for the nation’s independence day, offers clues to Mr. Lula’s lackluster showing and Mr. Bolsonaro’s rise.
The town of 35,000 sits in the bellwether state of Minas Gerais, which has backed the winner in every presidential election since 1988, when democracy returned to Brazil after a military dictatorship.
In the 2022 race, Nanuque, pronounced nah-NEW-key, was the most closely divided of Brazil’s 5,569 municipalities, with Mr. Bolsonaro’s father, Jair Bolsonaro, winning by one vote. (Jair Bolsonaro lost that election to Mr. Lula and was convicted of plotting a coup after trying to hold onto power.)
In 2026’s first round, the younger Bolsonaro finished ahead by two percentage points, the same margin he claimed in Brazil as a whole.
Mr. Bolsonaro’s ability to win similar towns — rooted in agriculture and with a strong Evangelical Christian presence — contributed to his strong first round showing.
He won 79 percent of towns with a large agricultural sector, a high percentage of evangelical Christians and that have less than 50,000 residents, according to an analysis by Marco Faganello, a political data scientist at Fundação Getulio Vargas, a Brazilian university. Jair Bolsonaro won 53 percent of such towns in 2022’s first round.
In interviews with scores of voters in Nanuque, including truck drivers, cattle ranchers, farmworkers, business leaders and civil servants, those who have abandoned Mr. Lula cited unfulfilled economic promises, his past corruption scandals and their frustration with health care, among other reasons.
While many on the left remain staunch supporters of Mr. Lula, others who had voted for him before expressed fatigue over an 80-year-old incumbent running for a fourth term. His Workers’ Party has been in power for 18 of the last 24 years.
Valdirene Santos Moura, a cook who has voted for Mr. Lula before, acknowledged his accomplishments, including introducing programs that helped the poor. But now, she said, she was “tired of him already.”
Geremias Alves de Souza, a coffee picker, dropped his voice so his wife would not hear him say he was voting for Mr. Bolsonaro. He said he associates the younger Mr. Bolsonaro with his father’s tough on crime policies.
Other voters said their support for Mr. Bolsonaro was based not on his track record — which they said they were unfamiliar with — but on their affection for Jair Bolsonaro.
Some said they were simply fed up with politics and were planning to abstain on Sunday.
One is Jovenildo Carvalho, 45, who runs a start-up that uses drones to deploy wasps to attack caterpillars that ravage sugar cane fields.
Mr. Carvalho, who grew up with no electricity and wore Che Guevara T-shirts in college, said he has no faith in either candidate’s ability to lead the country, and was frustrated by Brazil’s deeply polarized political landscape.
“I’d like to see Brazil without the veil of fanaticism and blind passion that it has today,” he said.
Big business has big grudges
Agribusiness in Brazil, which includes farming, cattle ranching, meatpacking plants and ethanol distilleries, has become a behemoth, accounting for a quarter of the country’s economy. For the first time, Brazil may soon surpass the United States in agricultural exports.
The sector’s leaders are among Mr. Lula’s biggest detractors, criticizing him over high interest rates, environmental regulations and gas subsidies that have reduced ethanol demand during the Iran war.
“If it were Lula against a stray dog, everyone would vote for the stray dog,” said Luiz Daniel Silva Rocha, whose family owns DASA, a large sugar mill and ethanol distillery outside Nanuque that employs hundreds of people.
The biggest target for local business leaders is Mr. Lula’s signature welfare program, known as Bolsa Família, which provides cash transfers to low income families. Brazilians agree that it has helped pull millions out of extreme poverty, but some now consider it a handout to those who aren’t financially desperate.
“In Brazil today, the policy is to reward those who don’t work,” said Ângelo Márcio Sousa Silva, DASA’s general manager.
Nearly 3,000 families in Nanuque receive cash transfers, according to government data, and business leaders say it has made it hard for them to fill jobs. Between DASA and the town’s largest employer, a meatpacking plant, there are about 120 full-time vacancies, leaving the plants operating below capacity.
The Bolsa Família program came up repeatedly as a driving force behind people’s votes for both candidates, far more than topics that dominate election talk among urban elites, like a scandal roiling Brazil’s Supreme Court or worries about U.S. interference in Latin American elections.
People who work in the informal sector — as day laborers on farms or cleaning houses — but still receive cash benefits remain loyal to Mr. Lula.
Letícia Silva de Almeida, 33, is among those. She works seasonally helping harvest coffee and earns $24 per day. She also receives $150 a month through the cash transfer program, even though she said that money was not essential.
“If they cut it off today, I’d be OK,” she said.
That mind-set infuriates others. Tatiane Souza da Silva, a housekeeper, said friends urged her to understate her income to qualify for the cash program, but she has refused on principle.
“I see young women in good health — men too — refusing to work,” she said. “That ends up hurting the economy.” Once a Lula voter, she plans to vote for Mr. Bolsonaro on Sunday.
Free health care, but no doctors
Mr. Lula has called Brazil’s free public health system “one of the masterpieces of health care worldwide.’’
That is not a word many in Nanuque would use. Many complained of long waits for specialists in faraway cities, even though a year ago, Mr. Lula launched a program meant to help underserved towns called “Now There Are Specialists.”
“We need the politicians to see us, when it comes to health care,” said Ana Paula Rodrigues dos Santos, 41, who was shopping for the lunches she cooks and sells for $6 each to make a living.
She said she needs her gall bladder removed but explained that the town’s public hospital lacks an intensive care unit, which her doctors have told her she may need since her obesity increases the risk of complications.
She has been on a waiting list at a hospital in a city three hours away for nearly three years, she said.
Ms. dos Santos described herself as an independent who was leaning toward Mr. Bolsonaro.
“It’s been going left, left, left and the left didn’t do anything for Brazil,” she said. “We have to put in new people.”
Prayers and Politics
The right’s increased appeal among voters is not just fueled by growing frustration with Mr. Lula. It is also driven by religion. The percentage of Brazil’s population that is evangelical Christian has tripled since 1991, and members of Evangelical congregations lean heavily conservative.
Dozens of Evangelical churches dot rich and poor neighborhoods in Nanuque, where some pastors preach opposition to abortion and homosexuality.
At New Life Evangelical Church, a relatively wealthy congregation, the pastor, Bishop Robson Merry Teixeira Farias, said he believed nearly all of his 300 members would support Mr. Bolsonaro for president.
Even within less well off congregations, support for Mr. Bolsonaro was still strong, according to pastors and members.
Under Brazilian law, religious leaders cannot make endorsements from the pulpit, but Bishop Merry, as he is known, suggested that preferences can be telegraphed by promoting conservative values that align with specific candidates.
“We do not champion men, we champion causes,” he said.
In a town with no mall or cinema, churches are central to social life, and congregants arrive well dressed and as eager to socialize as to pray.
On Sunday, after church services, they will have a second chance to socialize — at Nanuque’s 21 polling stations.
“As the election approaches, it is the responsibility of leaders” like him, Bishop Merry said, “to pass along their vision.”
“The sheep always try to imitate the pastor,” he added.
Silvia Ribeiro contributed reporting from Rio de Janeiro.
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