Forty-seven percent of Brazilian women who head their households say they will vote for President Lula of the Workers' Party. Twenty-seven percent name Senator Flávio Bolsonaro of the Liberal Party. The figures come from a breakdown of a Datafolha poll published on Tuesday by Folha de S.Paulo, the newspaper that runs the institute, 12 days before the first round of the presidential election.

The cut covers women who say they are the main breadwinners at home, a group the newspaper calls decisive in the country's poor outskirts. Their 20-point preference for Lula contrasts with the overall race: on Monday, news site UOL reported a tie between the two candidates in first- and second-round scenarios, and the BBC News Brasil poll tracker has Bolsonaro ahead in runoff matchups.

Folha's report, by Paulo Saldaña, opens with the story of Cenir Aparecida da Silva, 58, a construction forewoman in a poor district of Belo Horizonte. A single mother of four, she has spent 28 years on building sites. "I started when my youngest daughter was three months old", she told the paper. She also describes harassment on the job: "I hit him in the face on the spot. It was settled."

Final stretch

In the free TV campaign slots on Tuesday, both campaigns centered their pitches on food prices, according to news site g1. The October 4 ballot also features Caiado (PSD), Zema (Novo), Cury (Avante) and Renan (Missão), according to Poder360.

If no candidate wins more than half of the valid votes, the top two meet in a runoff. Until then, the race stays on the streets and on free TV airtime, with voting set for October 4.