New opinion polls, released today Saturday, showed that the Brazilian leftist leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva maintains strong progress in the presidential race on Sunday against the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, and is within reach of a complete victory. Brazil's most polarized election in decades will decide whether the former president, who spent time in prison on corruption charges, returns to power or the right-wing populist who attacked the voting system. Two opinion polls published in the afternoon also showed that Lula has the majority of valid votes and could win the election in the first round. Also, an IPEC poll showed Lula winning with 51 percent of valid votes, excluding blank and spoiled ballots, and a poll conducted by Datafolha said the two-term popular president would get 50 percent of the valid votes, with a margin of error of two percentage points. Earlier, Lula had 48.3 percent of the valid votes in a poll conducted by CNT/MDA. If none of the 11 candidates gets more than 50 percent of the votes, excluding blank and spoiled ballots, the top two contestants - almost certainly Lula and Bolsonaro - will go to a second round of voting on October 30.

Bolsonaro, a former army captain aged 67, spent 28 years as a congressman and is anti-gay and anti-abortion. He took office in 2018 in a wave of conservative sentiment and opposition to the Workers' Party. Bolsonaro concluded his campaign on Saturday with two mass rallies of motorcycle supporters in São Paulo and Joinville in Santa Catarina, where Lula rode in an open car then passed through tens of thousands of jubilant fans who came out in downtown São Paulo, excited to see him despite heavy rain. On the other hand, Lula's Workers' Party booked a place on the main Paulista Avenue in São Paulo on Sunday night to celebrate the victory of the 77-year-old former union leader and party founder.

Brazil's electronic voting system, which Bolsonaro repeatedly criticized as susceptible to fraud without providing evidence, allows the national electoral authority, TSE, to count results quickly within hours after the polls close at 5 p.m. The Supreme Court Chief Justice, Alexandre de Moraes, also called on Brazilians via Twitter to celebrate democracy in the country by going out to vote "in peace, security, harmony, respect, and freedom." Due to Bolsonaro's attacks on the voting system and the possibility of conflict, the electoral court invited an unprecedented number of international observers for this year's elections.