After four years of a right-wing Jair Bolsonaro government, Brazilians will vote for a new president on October 2, 2022. Former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — currently high in the polls — is confronting an increasingly delirious incumbent, who appears to have threatened unconstitutional action should he lose.

Bolsonaro’s victory came two years after the impeachment of Workers’ Party president Dilma Rousseff in 2016, the first woman to be president. The Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, or PT) had held office since 2003.

The period 2010–16 was dominated by the “credit crunch” crisis that sent the world into turmoil, with a generalized economic contraction, huge indebtedness in the advanced economies, and a considerable reduction in the consumption of raw materials. Brazil was badly hit. By 2015, GDP had declined by 3 percent, inflation was high (10 percent), and public debt went through the roof to 63 percent of GDP, making it tough for the government to maintain its poverty-eradication social policies.