Leader in polls for voting intentions, the former president Squid (PT) still needs to make adjustments to its campaign in the two largest electoral colleges in the country. In both, alliances and state platforms are well underway, but not resolved.
In São Paulo, PT and PSB, the party of ex-governor Geraldo Alckmin, who will be vice president on Lula’s ticket, have their own candidates for government. PT Fernando Haddad (PT) wants socialist Márcio França (PSB) to withdraw from the dispute and join his ticket as a candidate for the Senate. France, in turn, does not give up the competition.
The two pre-candidates have been talking with the aim of defining criteria that will decide which of them will leave the race in favor of the other. Despite this, there are those who bet on the possibility of both maintaining their candidacies, which would lead Lula to have two platforms in the state. Just in case, the PT has not yet announced the name of its candidate for the Senate for São Paulo. The vacancy is still waiting for Márcio França, who shows no signs of abandoning his main project.
In Minas Gerais, the situation is a little less comfortable. The PT will not launch a candidate for the government and, if it depends on Lula, will support the former mayor of Belo Horizonte, Alexandre Kalil (PSD) for the post. Kalil will fight the re-election of Jair Bolsonaro (PL) and is willing to ask for votes for Lula. The problem is that the PT has launched a competitor to the Senate, deputy Reginaldo Lopes, who will face a colleague of Kalil’s party, Alexandre Silveira.
In the ex-mayor’s script, he would support Lula, but the PT would not rival Silveira in the Senate race. Aware of the situation, the former president is considering raffling Reginaldo Lopes’ candidacy, but wants to negotiate something bigger in return: PSD’s national support for him, a possibility that is now considered remote.
Even if the formal alliance between PT and PSD is not sealed and Reginaldo Lopes maintains his candidacy for the Senate, PT members say that Kalil will ask for votes for Lula, since the former president is the main electoral godfather in the state. According to a survey by Quaest released in March, 41% of miners would choose a candidate supported by Lula, and 28% would choose one endorsed by Bolsonaro.
In the first round scenarios, the current governor Romeu Zema (Novo) – who supported Bolsonaro in 2018, but did not decide on his national strategy for 2022 – leads with 34%, against 21% for Kalil. The picture is inverted when the interviewee is asked who he would choose: Kalil supported by Lula or Zema supported by Bolsonaro. Of the total, 49% prefer the first option and 35% the second.