President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's reelection campaign is trying to build bridges with candidate Augusto Cury of the Avante party, eyeing a potential runoff. The strategy seeks to replicate a similar scenario to what happened in the 2022 election, when Simone Tebet, then with the MDB, came in third place with 3.84% of valid votes and ended up supporting Lula in the runoff.
The campaign's internal assessment is that the current scenario is more difficult for Lula than four years ago. Therefore, there is a perception that Augusto Cury could be even more decisive in this year's election than Simone Tebet was in 2022, if he manages to maintain or increase his relevance in the electoral polls.
In the last election, three days after the first round, Tebet had lunch with Lula at the home of former mayor Marta Suplicy and then announced her support for the PT candidate. This support was considered fundamental for the leftist's victory over Jair Bolsonaro, which was achieved with an advantage of 1.8 percentage points of valid votes.
According to the most recent Datafolha poll, released on Friday, Cury registered a slight downward fluctuation. Still, Lula's campaign maintains its strategy of approaching the psychiatrist, understanding that his eventual support in the runoff could be decisive in the dispute against the current government or another competitive candidate.
