>>55633
Apparently the Lula swing came from the first round abstentions. His party's second round campaign went all or nothing, posters warning Flávio would do austerity were plastered on every street. Instant win button.

There's still going to be austerity next year. Maybe half-hearted, as that's what everybody wants. Four more years of the same clique running the country since the turn of the millenium. Gerontocrats leaning into moral panic, managed decline, stagnant productivity, high interest rates, legally mandated spending nearing 100% of the budget, the poor living on handouts, herded into debt and promised more cheap credit so they can pay earlier debts, unproductive industries propped up forever, resentment-fueled politics. Consumption over production, rents over investment. Nobody wants a vision of national development, only short-term gain.

Not that Flávio would solve this but Lula ran on sacrificing more of the future to keep this zombie system on life support.

Any lasting solution would probably require freezing consumption, reining in rentiers, letting incompetent magnates go bankrupt and sending a lot of the political class to the firing squad. But the electorate doesn't have the heart to move an inch on this direction.