How Brazil's changing working class is reshaping the presidential race ahead of Lula's run-off

Osasco, on the edge of São Paulo, was once a city of factories. Now the shuttered plants have given way to shopping malls and the offices of delivery-app companies, and the place has picked up a nickname: São Paulo's "Silicon Valley." It voted for President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2022. In the first round of this month's election it switched to the right-wing Flávio Bolsonaro, who won the national vote and now faces Lula in a run-off on Sunday. Since 1989, every candidate who has won the first round has gone on to become president.

Gilberto Almazan, who leads a metalworkers' union in Osasco, is visibly worried. He cries as he recounts Lula's life: a boy who grew up hungry in the north-east, became a metalworker, then a union leader, then a three-time president. But he is frank about what has happened around him. He says the union movement that anchored Lula's support is stuck in the "Middle Ages" and struggling to keep up. "The profile of the working class changed," he says. Workers are no longer mostly industrial; they are in services. Metal, chemical and textile factories disappeared, he says, and five malls went up in their place.

Across Brazil, millions now earn a living through the gig economy, which Almazan calls "Uber-isation": driving, delivering food, running market stalls, offering beauty treatments at home. Many of these workers, he says, want freedom and flexibility over days and hours, not the welfare and collective action Lula has traditionally offered. Richard Lapper, who has written biographies of both Lula and Jair Bolsonaro, Flávio's father and president from 2019 to 2022, notes that the decline of manufacturing and the rise of individualised work are not unique to Brazil. But Brazil industrialised late and deindustrialised early, he argues, so the effects are sharper. He calls Lula a "victim of his own success."

The record supports that description. Unemployment fell to a record low and Brazil was removed from the United Nations Hunger Map under Lula's current term. Yet Lapper describes a crisis of expectations: people are better off but do not feel it, because prices have risen and household debt and interest rates are high. Robson, 53, a municipal civil servant in Osasco originally from Lula's home state of Pernambuco, grew up supporting him. He now blames the government's "mismanagement" and high spending for deficits and what he calls the "worst phase" of the tax burden. "Now you have to make choices," he says, "pay an instalment for your car, or put food on the table."

Among Bolsonaro voters in Osasco, the word "change" recurs. Many struggle to name specific policies they like, but they are frustrated with the economy, crime and corruption in politics, even though Flávio has faced corruption accusations himself, which he denies. Lawyer Gisele Bonfim, who backed Lula in 2022, says Bolsonaro "brings the hope of change." Tairine, who sells hot dogs at an open-air market near a large mall, used to abstain, though voting is compulsory and not voting carries a fine. This year she plans to vote for Bolsonaro, citing high taxes on "everything" she buys and saying "nothing has changed" since Lula returned. Bolsonaro has proposed cutting government spending, ministries and some taxes, while saying he would keep some of Lula's flagship welfare programmes.

Lula's problem was as much abstention as defection. In the first round, 33 million people did not vote, the highest abstention since 1998, and in some areas Lula lost votes against 2022 even though Bolsonaro did not gain more than his father did then. The campaign has responded by pushing hundreds of thousands of people, particularly students, onto the streets, and claims one São Paulo rally drew about a million. Aerial videos have spread widely online, and one image of a shirtless man waving a Lula flag has been shared tens of millions of times. Lula, 80, has called himself the "king of selfies" and posted videos of himself running along the campaign trail to counter talk that he is past his prime.

In Maré, one of Rio's largest favelas, controlled by rival gangs, abstention was above average, though Lula still won. Vitoria, an 18-year-old mother earning under £300 a month, credits his government with raising the minimum wage, guaranteeing two days off and providing essential medicines free. She is sceptical of Bolsonaro's plan to designate Comando Vermelho, the gang that controls part of Maré, a terrorist organisation, something he lobbied the US to do earlier this year. She fears it would bring authorities in to "kill, destroy, ruin families," and cites a Rio police raid last year that killed more than 130 people. Resident Andreza Dionísio blames last-minute changes to polling stations and "a sense of hopelessness about the future."

That void is increasingly filled by the evangelical church, which now counts about a quarter of Brazilians. Its mega-churches offer childcare, employment advice and even food. Pastor Silas Malafaia, who leads the Assembleia de Deus Vitória em Cristo in Rio's Penha neighbourhood, has millions of social media followers and officiated at Jair Bolsonaro's wedding. He is under investigation for allegedly obstructing the former president's coup trial, which he denies and calls politically motivated. He told the BBC that without the church, working-class areas would be in a state "worse than you can imagine," and says Flávio shares its stance on family and against abortion and gender "ideology."

For much of the new working class, though, the first round looked more like a rejection of Lula than an embrace of his rival. "There will never be another Lula," Almazan fears, meaning it as praise. Sunday will show whether Lula can persuade voters he has a new story to tell.