A former captain of the army leads the race in Brazil despite controversial remarks

"Repudiation and anger are the two emotions behind these elections," said Monica de Bolle, a Latin American scholar at Johns Hopkins University, calling for a referendum on the benefits of democracy and democracy. the evils of corruption.

Mr. Bolsonaro's popularity reflects the rise of anti-establishment politicians around the world. But few political analysts here think he will ever get more than 20% of the votes – mostly those of wealthy white men. Running for the small PSL party, Mr. Bolsonaro has had a fraction of the money and antenna time from his rivals, relying instead on social media. He also spent much of the month spent at the hospital after being stabbed at a rally.

However, on the eve of the first round of voting, Bolsonaro is clearly ahead of 32% of the vote, against 21% of Fernando Haddad for the Workers Party. While many Brazilians should refrain or refuse to choose a candidate, people close to his campaign are now cautiously optimistic: he can get a majority of votes to win the absolute victory Sunday, avoiding the second round on October 28.

While the other 11 presidential candidates are struggling to make progress, many Brazilians say there is little point in voting for anyone except Mr. Bolsonaro or Mr. Haddad, whose program Social Justice Party is very popular among the poor.

Winning the presidency is never an easy task in a divided country of 209 million people with gaping income inequalities. But the congressman born in São Paulo has exploited two points in common between Brazilians: hatred of politicians and fear of crime.

Bolsonaro is one of the few politicians not to suffer from the corruption scandal in the car wash system that has besieged the highest circles of Brazilian politics and business. He seized on this to portray himself as an underdog of the rotten political establishment of Brazil, while he was a member of the State Congress of Rio de Janeiro since 1991.

He also promised to fight crime in what has become the world's deadliest country, with 175 homicides a day. It proposes, among other things, to better equip the police force, to reduce the age of criminal responsibility from 18 to 18 years and to relax the firearms laws to allow self-defense.

This is a message that has even convinced some voters of indigenous communities in the Amazon, where guns are popular in some villages. Its liberal economic position also seduces the youngest members of the tribe, said Ubiratan Maia, a member of the Wapishana tribe who campaigned for Bolsonaro.

"The left has confused poverty for culture," he said. "We do not want to be poor, we want to be entrepreneurs."

Mr Bolsonaro, who admitted to having no knowledge about the economy, trusted Paulo Guedes, an economist educated at the University of Chicago and potentially finance minister, who said he was not a lawyer. is committed to reducing the role of government in the economy, to privatize the assets of total independence of the bank.

This approach worked well on the financial markets, but also among ordinary Brazilians who have so little confidence in the government that they lose confidence in democracy. According to a study conducted last year by pollster Latinobarómetro, the Chilean pollster Latinobarómetro, only 13% of Brazilians say they are satisfied with democracy, the lowest level in Latin America.

Mr Bolsonaro, who joined the army while he was young in the midst of the 1964-1985 military dictatorship, has at times shown contempt for democracy. He advocated closing the congress and joked in a 1999 interview that the presidential palace was good place to test a nuclear bomb. "

His army friends describe the 63-year-old as playful, honest and brutally direct.

But outside of his military circle, his remarks terrified the electorate.

During a debate on a public television channel in 2010, Mr. Bolsonaro pleaded for beating children to prevent them from "becoming gay," and then asserted that "no parent" 39 is proud to have a gay kid.

In 2014, he told a female parliamentarian that she was not pretty enough to rape. He recently said that he would pay less for his employees because they get pregnant. He said that having a daughter, his fifth child after four sons, was a moment of weakness. His roommate, General Hamilton Mourão, called last month single. mothers of "factories for the marginalized".

The rabid Brazilians took to the streets last weekend to protest. The pollsters now predict that half of the voters will not support the Conservative married three times, which is a major challenge for his campaign, but not insurmountable.

Many women who support her policies on crime and corruption say they are ready to miss such comments in a country where misogyny is commonplace and where many men – and women – think that women's place is at home.

Consuelia Marques, a 33-year-old manicurist and a staunch defender of the ex-captain's captain, said his remarks about women were irrelevant. "Brazil is broken," she said, praising her proposal to arm civilians. "The criminals will think twice about they know that people are armed."

Bolsonaro's popularity among women has actually increased last week, which analysts believe the decision of Edir Macedo, the most powerful evangelical leader of Brazil, has decided to approve. His support among the voters is now 27%, against 20% for Mr. Haddad, according to the pollster Datafolha.

Mr. Bolsonaro, whose first name is Messiah, was baptized in the Jordan and enjoys fervent support among evangelical Christians, who now make up one-third of all Brazilians.

Like women, some gay Brazilians continue to support Bolsonaro but are reluctant to say so, leading his supporters to predict a surprise increase in support in Sunday's vote.

"What I love most about Bolsonaro is his sincerity – something that's lacking today," said Smith Hays, an openly gay candidate in Congress in Bolsonaro's party. . Mr. Hays said that he thought that the leader of his party had no prejudices, but confused: "These are personal problems, there are other issues more important in the country . "

For business owners and the financial markets, the choice is simple: Mr. Bolsonaro is not the Workers Party. Not only do they accuse the left-wing party of the 2014-2016 recession, but they fear that Mr. da Silva's imprisonment has radicalized the party, underlining his continued support for the authoritarian regime of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, his neighbor.

"I'm not saying that Bolsonaro is a good thing," said an asset manager in São Paulo, whose wife and daughter have participated in recent marches. "It's not my second choice, even my third choice, but it's the least bad option."

Write to Samantha Pearson at [email protected] and Luciana Magalhaes at [email protected]