Flávio Bolsonaro, pictured with Tarcisio de Freitas, São Paulo’s governor, holds a tray of traditional snacks at a market On a sunny Sunday, a sea of yellow and green flooded the main avenue of Latin America’s biggest city.

Two weeks earlier, Flávio Bolsonaro, a right-wing senator, had beaten incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the first round of Brazil’s general election.

With smaller candidates backing Bolsonaro, the electoral maths pointed to another victory in the run-off on Oct 25.

Celebrating on Paulista Avenue, Bolsonaro’s supporters wore Brazil’s national jersey, which has become a symbol of the hard-right bolsonarismo movement.

By the old logic, Joane Nascimento, a 40-year-old lawyer visiting from Manaus, the capital of Brazil’s Amazon region, should not have been among them.

Like most of her family, she grew up a beneficiary of Bolsa Família, Lula’s flagship cash transfer programme for the poor.

Some of her relatives still supported Lula, she said. But Ms Nascimento and several others had switched camps, causing a rift in the family.

“I grew up believing that the PT was the answer,” she said, using the acronym for Lula’s Workers’ Party. “But it’s not giving us the opportunity to grow.”Ms Nascimento is not alone. Her story reflects a broader shift in Brazil, the region’s biggest economy and democracy, which has seen part of the Left’s core electorate turning to the Right for answers on economic and safety issues.

“The government has shown that it’s incompetent and that our country is in a dire state. I’m here because I want change,” Ms Nascimento said.

People attend the Bloco do 22 campaign event for Mr Bolsonaro in São Paulo last week For decades, Lula and the PT have been fixtures of Brazil’s political landscape. The party won five of six elections. The one it lost, in 2018, was to the Right-wing Jair Bolsonaro, when Lula was in prison on corruption charges that his supporters say were politically fabricated and were later overturned.

Lula’s participation in the election alone should have guaranteed the 80-year-old would win a fourth, final term. Or so his campaign thought.

“Brazil has always been predominantly conservative, as we’ve consistently seen in the makeup of Congress and the political profiles of state governors,” said Mauricio Moura, a Brazilian pollster. “But Lula is bigger than the PT, bigger than the left.”‘Brazil has changed’But Brazil has changed, both socio-economically and culturally, experts say.

The same social programmes that made Lula one of the most popular politicians worldwide now threaten to work against him.

Antonio Marcos do Nascimento de Lima at his home in the Padre Trindade settlement in Vargem Grande. It is a rural community established by the Landless Workers’ Movement, which has been supported by President Lula’s policies Since 2010, the number of self-employed has increased fifteenfold, to 15 million. Instead of feeling encouraged by Lula’s vision of a welfare state, many feel they’ve outgrown it.

As he leaned on his bicycle, Rogério Cunha, а food delivery worker, said he used to vote for Lula but would back Bolsonaro. “Something’s not working, so something has to change,” he said.

Brazil is also undergoing a cultural shift, spurred by the growth of agribusiness and the Evangelical Church.

A painting of Jair Bolsonaro, the father of Flávio, in Manaus Adding to that a sprawling banking and influence-peddling scandal that dominated the campaign’s final weeks, and the first round of voting became a manifestation of dissatisfaction.

“It was an anti-incumbent election against a government that more than half the country disapproves of,” Mr Moura, the pollster, said.

Compared with the last election in 2022, Lula lost 3.4 million votes. Painfully that included lower and middle-income votes, who chose Bolsonaro by a wide margin. Even in the north-east, a Lula stronghold, his vote share shrank. Abstention was at its highest level since 1998.

Supporters with an inflatable Lula da Silva in the favela, Vidigal, in Rio de Janeiro Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party (PL) also won the largest bloc in Congress, eating into centrist parties’ share, depriving Lula of his most natural allies. Economic concerns are one reason for the rightward swing.

On paper, Lula entered the election with an enviable economic record: record-low unemployment rates, nearly 10 per cent GDP growth during his term, inflation under control and record-high real wages.

Behind those figures, though, loomed high interest rates and public debt that, according to the IMF, could reach 97 per cent of GDP in 2026. More than 80 per cent of Brazilian households struggle with their own debt.

Together, they have created a sense that Brazil is struggling. In a survey last month by Quaest, 49 per cent of respondents said they thought the economy had worsened.

During the campaign, Bolsonaro capitalised on that perception, presenting himself as a fiscal disciplinarian who would cut red tape, taxes and government spending, all while somehow leaving Bolsa Família intact.

Flávio Bolsonaro, left, with President Lula da Silva during a televised debate last week Security is another worry. Despite the number of violent deaths falling to a record low, many Brazilians feel crime is worsening.

Again, Bolsonaro offered voters an attractive alternative, promising to crack down on crime in the spirit of El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, and saying Brazil would join the United States’ Shield of the Americas initiative.

Brazil’s election reflects a global trend since the pandemic, with incumbents worldwide struggling to stay in power.

But the comparison most widely cited is that with Joe Biden’s, the former US president, last campaign in the United States.

Fernando Brigidi, a Brazilian-American political strategist who has worked in the White House, experienced a sense of déjà vu as he watched the first-round results trickle in.

“I’ve seen this film before: An 80-year-old incumbent who leans on the politics of nostalgia, looks to the past and hasn’t adapted to a new political reality,” he said. “Voters don’t want more of the same, voters want something new.”Mr Bolsonaro joins his supporters at a rally in São Paulo last week History is against Lula: No candidate has ever managed to win the presidency after losing the first round.

But in the weeks since his loss, his team has fought hard to narrow Bolsonaro’s lead, increasing its presence on social media, where the right has dominated, staging rallies across the country and embarking on a major spending drive. It also managed to push through a widely popular measure to shorten the work week.

Polls suggest Lula is managing to close the gap, turning the run-off into a nail-biter.

“It’s part of the mythical figure that is Lula: If anyone could win against all odds, it would be him,” said Mr Brigidi.

Experts, however, warn that Brazil’s polarisation and political gridlock mean that, no matter who wins, neither camp risks getting the change they’re hoping for.