The Brazilian General Election takes place on October 2nd, when a President, Vice President, and National Congress will be elected. Here, we’re looking at the betting to be the next Brazilian President, and we will conclude with our political betting pick to win and our reasons why.
Back in 2018, Jair Bolsonaro shocked the world when he came from nowhere to win the election and become the new President of Brazil. Bolsonaro ran on a nationalist agenda and took advantage of the turmoil in his homeland to win.
No one reached the 50% threshold required to win the first vote, so the 2018 election went to a run-off to decide the outcome. In the run-off, Bolsonaro received 55.13% of the vote share, compared to Fernando Haddad, who received 44.87%.
Bolsonaro was then declared the winner and the 38th President of Brazil.
Moving on to this year’s general election, although eleven official candidates are vying for the Brazilian Presidency, the bookmakers have already written off the majority.
Depending on where you bet, two or three candidates are listed.
With BetOnline, whose odds we are using, there are just two names in the market. The current President, Jair Bolsonaro, and former two-term President, Lula da Silva.
Other sportsbooks go outside those two candidates, with some quoting Ciro Gomes at odds varying from +6600 to +15000. We’re also writing off the chances of Gomez and instead focusing on the battle between Bolsonaro and da Silva.
BetOnline makes Lula da Silva a heavy odds-on favorite to win the Brazilian General Election. They have priced da Silva at -500 to return for a second term. Jair Bolsonaro is +300.
This represents a huge swing in favor of de Silva over the past few months. General election betting markets are notoriously slow until an election is on the horizon. So to see da Silva go from -200 to -500 over the past few months is highly significant.
During the same period, Bolsonaro has only drifted from +200 to +300. The current President’s odds have barely changed over the past few months. His odds were briefly cut to +120, but they have again drifted on the back of unfavorable opinion polls.
The main difference and reason for that are that the remaining candidates aren’t now in the betting markets, and losing them from the market seems to have resulted in the odds moving in favor of da Silva.
You can read more about BetOnline in our BetOnline sportsbook review.
The 2022 Brazilian General Election takes place on Sunday, October 2nd. A candidate has to receive over 50% of the vote to be declared the winner.
If no candidate can manage that, the two candidates with the most votes go into a second round of voting on Sunday, October 30th. At that point, whoever receives the most votes (more than 50%) is declared the winner.
The candidates standing are:-
As we’ve already mentioned, the main two candidates are Jair Bolsonaro and Lula da Silva. So let’s have a look at both of these two candidates and name our betting pick.
In a two-horse race, political betting odds of +300 are a good price. I would advise caution there, though. When Bolsonaro won four years ago, he did it because of social unrest and instability in Brazilian politics.
Bolsonaro is widely regarded as the Brazilian Donald Trump. His tactics mirrored those of Trump’s in the 2016 US General Election, and if the betting odds for the 2024 US General Election are to be believed, what we will possibly see again in the not-too-distant future.
The problem for Bolsonaro is that when you go around attacking everything and everyone, you make a lot of enemies. And that’s exactly what the current President has done.
Before you start thinking, wow, that other guy sounds terrible, this one’s not great either. Lula da Silva has previously been found guilty of corruption and money laundering. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison, but it was later overturned.
Some in Brazil believe the conviction was corruption, while others think overturning it was corruption. It generally comes down to if you support da Silva or not.
As we’ve seen recently in the US and the UK, question marks over candidates’ personalities can be ignored if they paint the right picture. But at the same time, Donald Trump and Boris Johnson are no longer in power.
In Brazil, there seem to be question marks over the personalities of both candidates. But the story here seems to be that the center and the left are both uniting behind Lula da Silva.
Lula da Silva looks to be far from a perfect candidate but seems to be widely regarded as not as bad as the other bloke. He may not serve a full term if he wins, but all we need to know is who will win the election. We think he will, and we make Lula da Silva our betting pick to win the 2022 Brazilian General Election.
