The largest country in Latin America, Brazil, is on the cusp on its presidential election. It goes down on October 2 and the betting markets for it are raging right now. If you want to make money off the political future, read this to get expert betting advice on which candidate to bet on to win Brazil’s presidency.
It’s essentially a two-candidate race — and a close one at that. Below are the current odds to win Brazil’s highest office, per the best political online betting sites:
Brazil 2022 Presidential Candidates
As you saw in the odds, there are three different Brazil presidential candidates in the running. Let’s quickly cover who they are and their overarching chances to win the presidential chair:
Luis Ignacio Silva
Silva (known as Lula mostly) is the odds-on betting favorite to win across major online sportsbooks. He represents the Workers’ Party — the left-leaning part of Brazil. Lula has already been president once between 2003 and 2010, a mostly prosperous time in the country. Brazil, and much of the world, has fallen on hard times since the global pandemic. Much of Lula’s platform is based on returning Brazilians to that “golden era” when he presided.
Lula is about as interesting a candidate as you’ll find. On one hand, he left the presidency with an eye-popping 90-percent approval rating, which is rarified air in politics, no matter the country. At the same time, he spent 2018 to 2021 in prison for corruption and money-laundering charges, which were eventually dropped. He’s also 77 years old and a throat cancer survivor.
Jair Bolsonaro
Right on Lula’s tail is the sitting President, Bolsonaro. His resume, like Lula, is unique. Elected in 2018 when he represented the country’s right-wing group, but is now with the liberal party — not to be confused with the aforementioned Workers’ Party. Bolsonaro is said to have switched political affiliation nine times in the last 30 years.
Many compare Bolsonaro to Trump. Both are incredibly polarizing in their respective countries. Both completely downplayed COVID-19, only for both countries to become leaders in accumulated deaths. And like Trump, Bolsonaro is already ringing alarms about possible election rigging, despite no votes being cast yet.
Ciro Gomes
The distant third candidate is Gomes, who is running for President for the fourth time in the past 24 years. Brazil decides its President with up to two elections. The second is forced only if no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the total votes in the first election. If that threshold is not met, then a run-off is held with the top two candidates in the last, decisive vote. Gomes has never made it to this stage in his previous presidential runs.
In all likelihood, Gomes' cold streak will continue. Most polls have Gomes earning eight percent of the vote count, which would be criminally low compared to the other two.
Best Bet To Win 2024 Brazilian Presidency
While we’d love to compare and contrast each of the three candidates platform to inform our 2024 Brazil presidential bet, we won’t waste your time. Why? Because elections are rarely won on that. More often than not — no matter the country — sentiment and emotional response is the decisive factor.
And there’s no sentiment quite like hope and nostalgia. No candidate evokes those emotions more than Lula, in spite of his recent stint in prison. Like we said, Brazil was thriving throughout Lula’s previous term as President. Commodities boomed, deforestation in the Amazon nosedived, welfare social programs were introduced— and fairly or unfairly, Lula gets the credit for these prosperous times.
Right now, Brazilians could use some hope given the past three years. The country suffered more than 600,000 deaths due to COVID, which Bolsonaro constantly denied. Deforestation has picked up significantly. The currency, the reais, is trading at all-time lows against the dollar. Inflation is surging. All in all, the bad outweighs the good and consequently, Bolsonaro is shouldering plenty of the blame for it.
That’s why we’re laying a big bet on Lula to become president once more. Yes, the corruption antics (siphoning billions of dollars from state oil company Petrobras) has sagged his perception big time, but even then, it’s better than the incumbent. It feels like Lula is the “lesser of two evils” here, which is enough to draw out betting money.
How To Bet On International Politics?
Brazil isn’t the only international political bet you can make at the moment. Other foreign elections on the horizon are in Australia, Poland, and the UK, among others. To throw money on these, head to one of the bookies featured in the underneath table.
In the table, you’ll find two pieces of important information. The first are unbiased sportsbook reviews on each site. Read this to get a better grasp of the betting experience at said site. Second, we’ve detailed the lucrative betting bonus offers available from site to site. These deals could score you hundreds to thousands of dollars in free play right off the bat — which can be used on bets like the Brazilian election. Reference the table for full details on this.
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