SAO PAULO, Oct. 3 (UPI) -- Brazil's leading presidential candidate inched closer Thursday to achieving a first-round victory, with surveys indicating that he's garnered nearly enough support to vanquish the competition on Sunday. But he has yet to quash another contender's hopes for an electoral run-off.
Workers' Party (PT) candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has 49 percent of prospective voters, according to a recent poll, while his closest competitor, former Health Minister Jose Serra, trails him by 28 points.
The other two candidates -- former Rio de Janeiro state Gov. Anthony Garotinho and one-time finance minister and former Ceara state Gov. Ciro Gomes -- are rounding out the four-man race with 15 percent and 10 percent of the vote, respectively.
Brazilians will head to the polls Sunday to choose a successor to President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who is forbidden by law from seeking a third term.
If no candidate wins a majority of the vote, more than 50 percent, or garners more votes than the other three candidates combined, a run-off between the top two contenders on Oct. 27 will determine who leads Brazil for the next four years.
Lula, as the left-leaning PT candidate is commonly known, has led the race since it began some six months ago, although in recent weeks he has been steadily pulling away from the pack.
His solid command of the pre-election opinion polls has many analysts predicting he will win the election outright on Oct. 6.
Despite Lula's overwhelming lead, this year's race is considered by many to be the most heated in recent Brazilian history.
Personal and political mud slinging by all the candidates has dominated the headlines in South America's largest country, with Serra currently waging the majority of his attacks against Lula.
For weeks, the former health minister -- Cardoso's handpicked successor and running on the ruling party's Social Democratic ticket -- has sought to chip away at Lula's lead with little success.
Using scathing TV ads, Serra has attempted to draw attention to Lula's weaknesses -- a lack of formal political experience or a higher education (a former metalworker and union leader, Lula has the equivalent of a high school degree) and the PT's historical association with "radical policy positions," according to one analyst.
"I think that those weaknesses can find resonance with the voters. And that they are one of the main reasons why Serra still has good chance of winning this election," said Christopher Garman with the Tendencias Consulting Group. "The PT has been trying to overcome this notion that Lula is not ready to govern and the part is associated with radical policy positions."
Despite these obstacles, Garman said there was a 10 percent to 20 percent possibility of Lula winning in the first round.
In a run-off between Serra and Lula, the former health minister would likely try to raise the specter of Lula's past as a rough-edged, unlettered union leader who led protests against the military junta that ran Brazil from 1964-1985.
The three weeks between the election and any second-round vote would likely stir up even more bad blood between the candidates, causing a fractious divide amid the 17 parties represented in the Brazilian Congress.
"In terms of governability, it would be much better to get it over quickly so that you have a better chance of putting together an adequate coalition to govern next year," said David Fleischer, a political scientist at the University of Brasilia.
He said that Lula has a 70 percent chance of winning the race outright on Oct. 6.
In addition to Serra's attacks, Lula is also fighting an uphill battle to convince Brazilian and international investors that he is capable of handling the complex problems of the world's ninth-largest economy, burdened with a $260 billion debt.
Concerns at home and on Wall St. revolve around speculation that if elected, Lula might default on the debt, sending Brazil toward the catastrophic depth experienced by its southern neighbor Argentina.
Lula has repeatedly assured investors and the IMF -- which recently gave Brazil a $30 billion bailout -- that he would honor all debts, though he might seek to restructure the payment.
"There are a small group of people on Wall St. who accept that Lula will win and that a Lula government won't be the end of the world," said Fleischer.
"But you do have these doomsday people who think that a Lula government will be the end of the world ... and that Brazil is going to go over the brink and end up a disaster."
