presidential

Prominent Democratic governors, some considering 2028 presidential bids, gathered Thursday in Los Angeles for a high-dollar fundraiser.

Tickets to attend the event cost up to $100,000, according to an invitation. Closed to the press, it was expected to raise more than $1.5 million for the Democratic Governors Assn., among the largest amount the group has ever raised at a fundraiser in Los Angeles.

Gov. Gavin Newsom introduced fellow Democratic Govs. Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Maura Healey of Massachusetts, Laura Kelly of Kansas, Katie Hobbs of Arizona, Wes Moore of Maryland, Josh Stein of North Carolina, Tim Walz of Minnesota and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan.

Several attendees, including Newson, Beshear and Whitmore, are widely believed to be eyeing a presidential run in 2028. Walz was then-Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate in her unsuccessful 2024 bid for the presidency.

Beshear moderated the conversation among the state leaders at the Los Angeles-area home of liquor heiress Ellen Bronfman Hauptman and her husband, former Chicago Fire soccer club owner Andrew Hauptman. Attendees enjoyed cocktails and passed hors d’oeuvres
around the pool before settling in for a conversation in the house that focused on how governors must focus on results more than ideological disputes, and how that ought to be a model for federal elected officials.

About 45 donors attended, including Damon Lindelof, the creator of “Lost,” and Scott Budnick, the executive producer of “The Hangover” movie series. Others who supported the event included director J.J. Abrams and former Walt Disney Studios Chairman Alan Horn.

The EU’s election observer said the vote met democratic standards despite fraud allegations.

Peru’s presidential election result will not be finalised until mid-May, with challenged ballots from last Sunday’s vote still being reviewed, says the electoral authority.

With 93 percent of ballots counted, right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori leads with 17 percent, according to officials.

Under Peru’s electoral system, the top two candidates advance to a second-round runoff. A close contest has emerged for second spot between left-wing candidate, Roberto Sanchez on 12 percent, and ultra-conservative Rafael Lopez Aliaga close behind on 11.9 percent.

The margin between the two widened slightly on Saturday to about 13,600 votes.

Yessica Clavijo, secretary general of the National Jury of Elections (JNE), said the delay was due to the review of more than 15,000 challenged ballots. About 30 percent concern the presidential race, the rest relate to legislative elections.

Lopez Aliaga, a former mayor of the capital Lima, has been the most vocal critic of the delay. He has alleged fraud without presenting evidence and called for the election to be annulled. He urged supporters of his Popular Renewal Party to protest on Sunday.

Sanchez also criticised the election process, telling reporters: “These serious organisational issues must be investigated and there must be appropriate sanctions”.

A record 35 candidates ran for president in Peru, a country that has faced years of political instability. Four of its last eight presidents have been impeached by Congress.

Voting was disrupted by delays in the delivery of election materials, forcing authorities to extend polling into Monday in parts of Lima.

Despite the setbacks, the European Union’s election observer mission said the vote met democratic standards. On Friday, prosecutors raided a warehouse belonging to the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE), the body responsible for organising the election. Four officials have been reported to the JNE over alleged offences linked to voting rights.

The vote count continues to determine who will join conservative Keiko Fujimori in Peru’s presidential run-off in June.

Calls to remove the head of Peru’s electoral authority have intensified as delays and alleged irregularities clouded the presidential vote count.

As of Friday, no clear challenger has emerged to face conservative frontrunner Keiko Fujimori in the June 7 run-off.

The general election was held on Sunday, but an extension was granted to accommodate for the difficulties in ballot distribution.

Pressure has mounted against the head of Peru’s National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE), Piero Corvetto. Complaints over errors and logistical problems during Sunday’s election have been compounded by a slow tally that has rattled investor confidence and heightened uncertainty.

According to the ONPE, leftist Roberto Sanchez and ultraconservative former Lima Mayor Rafael Lopez Aliaga remain locked in a close battle for second place, separated by about 13,000 votes as of Friday.

With 93.3 percent of the ballots counted, Sanchez held 12.0 percent of the vote and Lopez Aliaga 11.9 percent.

Fujimori, meanwhile, remained firmly in first place with 17 percent, positioning her for the run-off. Final results could take up to two weeks, according to local election-monitoring group Transparencia.

The vote counting has been further delayed by the roughly 5 percent of ballots that were identified for review due to missing information or errors in polling station records, according to ONPE data. Those ballots will be reviewed by a special electoral jury before being included in the final count, officials said.

Business leaders and lawmakers from across the political spectrum have called on Corvetto to step down, arguing that a replacement should oversee the second round.

“Errors this serious have consequences,” Jorge Zapata, head of business chamber CONFIEP, told local radio station RPP.

Earlier this week, Corvetto acknowledged that there had been some logistical delays that forced voting to be extended by a day, mainly in Lima. Those delays triggered fraud allegations, notably from Lopez Aliaga, who has called for counting to be suspended. Corvetto has denied that any irregularities took place.

Even so, Peru’s top electoral court, the National Jury of Elections, filed a criminal complaint with prosecutors against Corvetto, citing alleged offences, including violations of voting rights. Representatives for Corvetto did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

An investigation is also under way after materials from four polling stations were found on a public road in Lima on Thursday, the police said. ONPE said on the social media platform X that the votes from those stations had already been recorded for counting.

European Union election observers said this week that they found no evidence of fraud.

April 16 (UPI) — Venezuelan interim President Delcy Rodríguez has hired U.S. attorney and lobbyist Jihad M. Smaili to represent her interests in Washington and support groundwork for a possible presidential campaign, according to filings with the U.S. Department of Justice.

Records filed under the Foreign Agents Registration Act show Smaili will act as a foreign agent for Rodríguez, including assisting with her “future political campaign” ahead of Venezuela’s next presidential election, though no date has been set for the vote.

According to the filing, Smaili will represent Rodríguez in pending and future litigation involving Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., Citgo and creditor claims. He will also provide daily advice on matters involving the U.S. State Department and the White House, independent news organization Efecto Cocuyo reported.

The contract said Smaili will “provide daily advice and counsel to the foreign principal on matters involving the Department of State and the president of the United States, including advice on how to strengthen and advance the current relationship for the benefit of the Venezuelan people.”

The agreement also describes Rodríguez as a candidate in Venezuela’s upcoming presidential elections and includes support for her “future political campaign.”

The move comes shortly after the United States lifted personal sanctions on Rodríguez and recognized her as a legitimate authority in Venezuela’s political transition.

According to Infobae, Smaili also will advise on retaining law firms involved in litigation tied to oil companies, as well as creditor claims related to cases involving the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

Citgo, PDVSA’s U.S.-based refining and marketing subsidiary, is at the center of multiple creditor disputes as international claimants seek to seize the asset to satisfy unpaid Venezuelan debts. A federal court in Delaware has authorized the sale of shares in the company to help cover claims totaling about $20 billion.

U.S. victims of FARC-related violence are also seeking to participate in the auction and recover about $318 million in damages.

The votes are in, and it’s bad news for John McCain. Barack Obama has a big lead in the sale of campaign buttons and other election paraphernalia, outselling McCain 3 to 1 on one memorabilia website.

An Obama victory could make some of those pieces more valuable, experts say, given the historic nature of his candidacy. A button from the launch of Obama’s presidential campaign sold for $150 in August at the American Political Items Collectors National Convention.

If you think there’s no redeeming value to the interminable exercise known as the American presidential campaign, you are not a collector. The stock market may have tanked, but the longest presidential season in U.S. history has stimulated a different kind of investment opportunity.

“This year more than any other, people are collecting political memorabilia,” says Adam Gottlieb, a spokesman for the California Energy Commission and a presidential-item junkie whose extensive Teddy Roosevelt collection is on exhibit through the end of the year at the California Historical Society in San Francisco. “People are yearning for nostalgia, something meaningful in their lives.”

On Monday, the PBS series “Antiques Roadshow” gets into the act with “Politically Collect,” a program that pulls back the appraisal curtain on presidential artifacts worth considerably more than the paper or tin on which they’re printed — up to $75,000, for instance, for a photograph of Lyndon B. Johnson taking the oath of office after President Kennedy was shot in 1963.

“Political items have really gone up in price,” says Jeffery Daar, an attorney and Democratic Party activist whose Northridge home overflows with buttons and other memorabilia from the last 40 years of electioneering.

Presidential paraphernalia has long been the domain of hard-core political fans such as Daar, who live to unearth an obscure invitation or rare tchotchke. But in the last decade, the field has also become a place to make a tidy profit. A 1920 button of Democratic presidential candidate James Cox and his running mate, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, can sell for as much as $30,000. Last month, a signed photo of John F. Kennedy was going for $4,200 on Politics-Now.com. EBay and political memorabilia auction sites have made it possible for anyone to click their way into the game.

The collecting impulse is driven by something the afflicted say you can’t get from stamps or Cabbage Patch stockpiles.

“It’s not just a button, but an item in a political campaign. It’s a piece of living history,” says Daar, former head of the Democratic Party in the San Fernando Valley and a longtime delegate to his party’s conventions, where he scoops up all the mementos he can.

“Every collector of political memorabilia is also a frustrated historian,” says Steve Ferber, who sells mementos of presidents and hopefuls with his wife, Lori, through LoriFerber.com.

Tom Morton, a Los Angeles accountant specializing in pre-1930s items, recently landed clay smoking pipes puffed by Millard Fillmore and Franklin Pierce.

“It’s one thing to read about it in a history book,” he says. “It’s quite another to hold it in your hands.”

But not all candidates inspire collectors to reach out and acquire. Tom French, a leading dealer and owner of Politicalheritage.com in Santa Cruz, says it’s hard to give away a Nixon button. It’s also tough unloading Michael Dukakis, Bob Dole and George W. Bush fare.

Not surprisingly, the most in-demand figures tend to be the most charismatic and popular presidents — Abraham Lincoln, FDR and Theodore Roosevelt, JFK, Ronald Reagan. Harry Truman also vaults into the ranks of the most valuable because scant artifacts were produced for the candidate who was a long shot to win in 1948.

Scarcity, popularity and age are major factors in the pricing of political memorabilia. An abundance of items were produced for 1940 Republican candidate Wendell Wilkie, including some fabulous Wilkie nylons ($40) and buttons that said, “No Man Is Good Three Times,” all to no avail against the popular FDR. So many Wilkie items are in circulation, they’re cheap — not like the Cox-FDR button, valued at $30,000 because only a few dozen are known to exist. Some scarce Truman items can run about $10,000.

For collectors, a crucial consideration is whether the material was produced by the campaign. Daar says 95% of the buttons and T-shirts available for sale in the current cycle were made by outside vendors and won’t be worth much. Look for official items created by the Obama and McCain campaigns and materials with specific dates and events attached to them, such as an Obama button from the rural caucus, something Daar likes for future value.

Collectors recommend buying things you like — favorite candidates or graphics that catch your eye. And if you want to buy for investment, do the research to make sure the item is authentic. You can get help by joining American Political Items Collectors ($28 a year, www.apic.us), a national organization founded in 1945 that sponsors dozens of button meets every year and authenticates artifacts.

Avid collectors, however, are drawn to the outsized characters who seek the highest office in the land and the creative wiles used to get them there.

“There’s got to be something behind the item — the personality, the election, the historical context, or you might as well be collecting nails,” says Neal Machander, an Orange County collector and past president of American Political Items Collectors.

The exploits of rough-riding, big-game-hunting Teddy Roosevelt have captivated Gottlieb since he was in grade school. “It’s like he lived six lives,” Gottlieb says.

His collection contains mementos of Roosevelt’s whistle stop in Los Angeles on his trip through California in 1903. When it comes to straight talk, it’s hard to top this line from a Roosevelt button in 1912: “If You’re Against Me, You’re a Crook.”

The sedate catch phrases of modern elections are as exciting as a phone book next to the raucous sloganeering of the early 20th century. Take, for instance, the 1928 rallying cry on an anti-prohibition button: “Vote for Al Smith and Make All Your Wet Dreams Come True.” Last year, it sold at auction for $9,560.

“Collectors really eat up the hoopla,” says French, who adds that he’d kill on “Jeopardy” in the VP category. “It’s an important representation of what democracy and politics are all about. We’re just in awe of the office.”

—

home@latimes.com

Brazil’s Supreme Court has ordered a probe into whether right-wing presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro issued defamatory statements about his election rival, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

On Wednesday, a decision from Justice Alexandre de Moraes was published, allowing the Federal Police to proceed with an investigation into posts Bolsonaro published in January.

Bolsonaro, at the time, responded to news that the United States had abducted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro with insinuations linking Lula to crimes.

“Lula will be exposed,” Bolsonaro posted on the social media platform X, with screenshots of a handcuffed Maduro and an article about Lula.

He then predicted that the left-wing alliance known as the Sao Paulo Forum would collapse in scandal.

“It is the end of the Sao Paulo Forum: international drug and arms trafficking, money laundering, support for terrorists and dictatorships, rigged elections,” Bolsonaro wrote.

There are limitations to the freedom of speech in Brazil, and under its penal code, defamation can be a criminal offence. Prosecutors have the option of seeking heightened penalties for defamation against presidents or heads of state.

The Federal Police have a period of 60 days to carry out their initial investigation.

But in a statement to local media, a spokesperson for Bolsonaro, a senator for Rio de Janeiro, denounced the probe as a violation of his rights.

“The senator limited himself to reporting facts and detailing crimes for which Nicolas Maduro was arrested and is being prosecuted internationally,” the statement said, adding that there was no “direct criminal accusation against” Lula.

Bolsonaro and Lula are currently in a neck-and-neck race for the presidency ahead of October’s general election.

A poll released this week from the research firm Quaest shows Lula slightly ahead in the first round of voting, with 37 percent of the vote compared with Bolsonaro’s 32 percent.

But if the race proceeds to a run-off, the frontrunner flips. Bolsonaro polls slightly ahead in a one-on-one contest against Lula, netting 42 percent support compared with the incumbent’s 40 percent.

The poll has a margin of error of about 2 percent, though, meaning the results are not conclusive. There is also nearly five and a half months until the first round of voting on October 4.

Both Bolsonaro and Lula are well-known quantities in Brazil’s political sphere.

For the 80-year-old Lula, this year’s race will see him run for a fourth term in office. Previously, he served as president from 2003 to 2011, and then he ran again in 2022, defeating Senator Bolsonaro’s father, Jair Bolsonaro, the incumbent president that year.

The elder Bolsonaro is currently serving a 27-year prison sentence for attempting to subvert the results of that election.

The margins were tight in the 2022 run-off, and then-President Bolsonaro refused to concede defeat, instead suggesting that there were “malfunctions” in the electronic voting machines that favoured Lula.

His supporters took to the streets to protest his loss, blockading roads and attacking police headquarters in the capital, Brasilia.

The unrest culminated in an attack on January 8, 2023, against government buildings in the capital, which was seen as an attempt to trigger a military uprising against Lula’s leadership.

Former President Bolsonaro was later convicted in September 2024 of plotting to stay in power, with prosecutors presenting evidence that he and his allies explored options including calling a new election and assassinating Lula.

The former president has denied wrongdoing and accused his adversaries of a political witch-hunt.

In December, his eldest son, Flavio, 44, entered the 2026 presidential race with his father’s endorsement. He has suggested he would seek his father’s freedom as part of his campaign.

Earlier this year, Lula vetoed a bill that would have lowered Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence. He has denounced his predecessor’s actions as a coup attempt.

April 15 (UPI) — Leftist candidate Roberto Sánchez has moved into second place in Peru’s presidential vote count, positioning himself for the runoff election as officials continue to tally ballots from the general election.

With about 90% of ballots counted, official results from Peru’s National Office of Electoral Processes show Keiko Fujimori leading with 16.9% of the vote, securing her place in the runoff. The race for second place remains extremely close.

After three days of slow vote counting, Sánchez climbed to second place with 12,05% of the vote, edging far-right candidate Rafael López Aliaga, who has 11.94%.

Ballots in Peru are processed in the order they arrive, favoring candidates with stronger support in major cities during the early stages of the count. That has kept the country in suspense, as the remaining rural vote could solidify Sánchez’s lead, La República reported.

Sánchez, a congressman and head of the leftist Juntos por el Perú party, ran as the political heir to former President Pedro Castillo, under whom he served as trade minister. During the campaign, he adopted Castillo’s signature wide-brimmed hat in public appearances.

His platform calls for sweeping state reforms through a constituent assembly, Peru’s entry into the BRICS bloc and greater state control over strategic resources without expropriation, seeking support in the Andean south and rural regions.

If Sánchez advances to the June 7 runoff, the result would echo Peru’s 2021 presidential election, when Castillo, then a little-known union leader, unexpectedly reached the second round against Keiko Fujimori with 18.9% of the vote.

As Sánchez gained ground, López Aliaga called the election a “systematic fraud” and demanded the vote be annulled, alleging manipulation in the electoral authority’s data transmission system and logistical chaos, El Comercio reported.

Election observation missions Tuesday backed the integrity of the process, describing the vote as credible and transparent despite logistical problems that caused delays and forced some polling stations to remain open longer, according to France 24.

Peru’s comptroller general also warned of serious problems in the distribution of tally sheets and election materials during the 2026 vote, which reportedly delayed polling station openings in parts of the country, Latina TV reported.

Election authorities said the prolonged count is largely due to the technical complexity of processing ballots that combined five simultaneous elections: president, national senators, regional senators, lower house lawmakers and Andean Parliament representatives.

Voters were asked to choose among 35 presidential candidates and nearly 10,000 candidates for Congress and the Andean Parliament.

Facing criticism and legal complaints over the delay, the electoral office director, Piero Corvetto, defended the process and urged calm as officials continue counting ballots from Peru’s most remote rural areas.

Benin is voting for its next president. The election is between Benin’s current Finance Minister Romauld Wadagni and the opposition candidate, Paul Hounkpe.

Al Jazeera’s Ahmed Idris is in Cotonou, explaining what’s at stake.

Benin is facing harsh economic conditions and security challenges that its new leader will have to address.

Voting is under way in Benin’s presidential election with long-serving Finance Minister Romuald Wadagni expected to win in the absence of a major challenger.

Polls opened at 7am (06:00 GMT) on Sunday and will close at 4pm (15:00 GMT). More than 7.9 million people are registered to vote, including 62,000 in the diaspora.

Backed by the two main parties in the governing coalition and the outgoing president, Patrice Talon, Wadagni, a 49-year-old former Deloitte executive, is being challenged by Paul Hounkpe, an opposition figure and former culture minister whose campaign has been low-key.

The member of the Cowry Forces for ⁠an Emerging Benin party got on the ballot with help from lawmakers of the two main ruling coalition parties after they refused to endorse the candidacy of Rene Agbodjo, head of the opposition Democrats party.

Talon, 67, is barred from running again after two terms in office and is expected to step down with a legacy of mixed results: economic growth, which reached 7 percent last year, but also a clampdown on the opposition and his critics. In December, a group of military officers also tried and failed to overthrow Talon’s government.

The new president will have to address major challenges, including a huge gap between the poor and well-off. The poverty rate is estimated at more than 30 percent, and many Beninese complain that the benefits of the economic growth over the past decade have not trickled down to them.

Benin’s economic growth will also depend on improving security and stabilising the country. Benin has been the hardest hit among coastal West African states by armed fighters from the Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), an al-Qaeda affiliate that has made major gains in the central Sahel region.

Wadagni has promised to deliver on bread-and-butter issues like expanding access to potable water and guaranteeing emergency healthcare regardless of ability to pay.

“The next phase of the country’s development will be the eradication of extreme poverty. That is one of his priorities,” one of Wadagni’s close associates told the AFP news agency.

‘A climate of fear’

Hounkpe has noted that the situation for many of Benin’s nearly 14 million people has not improved under previous leaders and has promised to bring about change.

“If we make progress but none of us can afford three meals a day, we haven’t made any progress. Yes or no?” he asked at a rally this month.

He has also decried what he described as a climate of fear as the political space for the opposition shrinks and the ruling coalition holds every seat in the National Assembly after the Democrats failed to win 20 percent of the vote in the last legislative elections, the threshold needed to enter the National Assembly.

Provisional results are expected on Tuesday in an election in which many people said they will not vote.

“I won’t go and vote. This election is not inclusive. You cannot talk about genuine democratic competition when some key political players are barred,” Arnold Dessouassi, a 39-year-old teacher, told AFP.

Reporting from a polling station in the port city of Cotonou, Al Jazeera’s Ahmed Idris said voting has been slow and none of the ballot boxes is full.

“There is a low turnout of voters on election day,” he said.

He added that this low turnout is due to controversies surrounding the accreditation for candidates to run in the election.

Other voters have spoken of the presidential election as a formality and urged Wadagni to deliver on his platform.

“Once President Romuald Wadagni is at the head of this country, I would like him to promote and help young people to find work because we have many young graduates on the streets driving ‘zem’,” 34-year-old teacher Marcel Sovi told the Reuters news agency, using local slang for motorcycle taxis.

Christelle Tessi, a 40-year-old trader, added that Wadagni should focus on improving security in the north, where JNIM killed 54 ‌Benin soldiers in ⁠one attack a year ago and another 15 in an attack last month.

“What is happening in northern Benin is that our brothers are being killed, and if a soldier goes there on a mission, it is his body that comes back,” she said.

Congress versus the presidency

Experts like Tuesta argue that the last decade of political instability has all but rendered Peru’s executive branch a secondary power.

By contrast, its unicameral Congress has expanded its might, though its members are largely unpopular among Peruvians.

Part of its influence comes from its impeachment powers. Peru’s Congress can remove presidents for “moral incapacity”, a catch-all term that has been used to denounce anything from undisclosed meetings to security crises.

Paulo Vilca, a researcher at the Institute of Peruvian Studies, explained that the shifting power dynamics have made it difficult for presidents to remain in office.

“In the past, we used to elect presidents for five years. Now, what’s more likely is that they will not last five years,” said Vilca.

But Peru’s unicameral Congress will come to an end this year. On Sunday, Peruvians will vote for a second congressional chamber, a Senate, for the first time since 1990.

Vilca argues that the congressional election may be even more important than this year’s presidential race. But it will also likely deepen Peru’s ongoing political crisis, he added.

He predicts that Congress’s chambers will soon be in conflict with each other, as well as with the president, in a three-way battle for power.

“It is very likely that those who are elected deputies, for example, will not be very satisfied with having a subordinate position in front of the Senate,” Vilca said. “So we’re going to move from a crisis of two to a crisis of three.”

The Senate was eliminated in 1992 by the late President Fujimori, Keiko Fujimori’s father, after he dissolved Peru’s bicameral Congress and implemented military rule.

The younger Fujimori has sought to build on her father’s legacy, and her right-wing party, Fuerza Popular, has become a deciding force in the unicameral legislature.

Keiko Fujimori even pledged to use her party’s power to “govern from Congress” after her defeat in the 2016 presidential race.

Since then, analysts have argued that Fuerza Popular has led efforts to change governmental processes to maintain or expand its power, even at the expense of democratic participation.

One change that it championed and passed in 2025 requires parties to earn at least 5 percent of the overall vote and a minimum of seven seats in the lower chamber to maintain their official political registration. For the Senate, parties must get at least three seats and 5 percent of votes.

Critics have said the measure creates a nearly insurmountable threshold.

“This whole system has been designed by the parties that are currently in Congress. And in particular, the one that has controlled the Constitutional Committee all these years has been Fuerza Popular,” said Vilca.

“I think the purpose of designing this whole model has been to maintain a status quo, which the Fujimori wing has also created in the last five years.”

Vilca is not optimistic that a new Senate will resolve the erosion of power away from the presidency. If anything, he anticipates more conflicts to come.

“My most likely scenario is that the crisis continues,” he said, “that whoever is elected president will enter into confrontation with the Senate”.

Benin will elect a new president on Sunday in a race that is shaping up to favour the chosen successor of the governing party, which has been in power for the past decade.

Outgoing President Patrice Talon, 67, is barred under the constitution from running again after two terms in power, and will step down with a legacy of mixed results: economic growth, but also a clampdown on the opposition and critics.

The small West African nation with a population of 14 million has also seen increasing numbers of attacks in its north as Sahel-based armed groups expand their territories towards the Atlantic coast.

Benin is sandwiched between its bigger neighbour, Nigeria, to the east and Togo to the west. The coastal country has increasingly gained attention as a tourist destination as more people from the African diaspora flock to its windy beach towns.

A former French colony, Benin retains French as its official language. Fon, Yoruba, Bariba, and Fulfulde are among the largest local languages spoken in the country.

Here’s what to know about Sunday’s election:

What’s happening?

About eight million eligible voters will choose a president for the next seven years.

Candidates will need to secure at least 50 percent of the votes; otherwise, a run-off will be called on May 10 between the top two candidates.

There are only two candidates, however.

The main opposition party, the Democrats, failed to get enough lawmakers to sponsor a candidate, so it is not on the presidential ballot. It earlier failed to win any seats in legislative elections in January.

Reporting from a governing party campaign event in the commercial capital, Cotonou, this week, Al Jazeera’s Ahmed Idris said the mood there was lively, but that it did not represent feelings in all of Benin after the main opposition party was sidelined.

“Most supporters of President Talon feel that this is a walkover …The only question will be whether the voting population will turn out in huge numbers. The last election we had only 50 percent,” he said.

Who is running?

Romuald Wadagni: The 49-year-old is presently the country’s finance minister and is the candidate of the governing alliance between the Progressive Union Renewal (UPR) and the Republican Bloc (BR).

A former Deloitte executive, he is expected to take a comfortable lead on Sunday, having been endorsed by current leader Talon, with whom he says he has a “father-and-son” relationship.

Wadagni, in his campaign, has touted the benefits of continuity that would come with his win. He has highlighted achievements under Talon, like tripling the national budget and posting the cotton-exporting country’s highest GDP growth rates in more than two decades.

He is also proposing new development hubs and expanding healthcare access.

Under Talon, “I had the honour of managing one of your most precious assets: your money,” Wadagni told supporters on the campaign trail in March. “I will do the job with the same seriousness and dedication,” he said.

On Friday, the final day of campaigning, he told supporters in Cotonou: “We are going to move forward, go even further with what began before your very eyes,” referring to a decade of economic transformation in the country.

Paul Hounkpe: The 56-year-old is the only opposing candidate.

A former teacher, he represents the Cowry Forces for ⁠an Emerging Benin party (FCBE).

He was formerly the culture minister under the government of ex-leader Thomas Boni Yayi of The Democrats. He also ran as a vice presidential candidate in the 2021 elections.

He is seen as a moderate, and has pledged to reduce the price of basic products and to secure the release of opponents imprisoned under Talon’s administration.

Hounkpe has campaigned on the perceived sidelining of citizens despite economic growth and flashy tourism projects under the current government.

What are the key issues?

Continuing Talon’s economic legacy

Economic growth sustained for a decade has been among Talon’s strongest achievements, and Beninese will be looking for a president who can sustain or improve on that.

Benin’s economy grew 7 percent in 2025 according to the International Monetary Fund, making it one of the region’s steadiest economies.

That’s driven by investments in trade, agriculture and infrastructure, including port expansions in Cotonou.

On the other hand, benefits have not been equally distributed across the country as poverty remains widespread in rural areas, especially in the poorer north.

Rising insecurity and political stability

Benin made headlines in December after a group of military officers attempted but failed to seize power. About 100 alleged coup planners are still in jail awaiting trial.

The coup leaders’ key complaints were the deterioration of security in northern Benin, where al-Qaeda and ISIL(ISIS)-affiliated armed groups from neighbouring Sahelian countries have increasingly launched attacks on communities. They said soldiers were “neglected” on the front lines.

Benin’s north is close to the tri-border area, a hotbed for armed violence. Lack of security cooperation with Niger and Burkina Faso, both now led by military leaders, has worsened the situation.

An attack by the al-Qaeda-backed Jama’at Nusrat al‑Islam wal‑Muslimin (JNIM) on Benin military posts last year killed 54 soldiers. Last month, another 15 were killed.

Candidate Wadagni has promised to defend the north by creating municipal police forces to guard border towns.

Shrinking democratic space

Talon has also been accused of dragging the country back into an era of autocracy, especially after authorities shut down cost-of-living protests in April 2024.

Beninese treasure the country’s reputation as one of West Africa’s most stable democracies in recent times, but critics say that has changed under Talon, and opposition groups accuse him of using the justice system to undermine other parties.

A constitutional reform in November extended presidential terms from five to seven years. It also established grounds for the president to nominate candidates to the Senate, which further raised the bar for opposition parties to enter parliament.

In January’s parliamentary election, Talon’s two allied parties controlled all 109 seats in the National Assembly.

Rights groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have meanwhile accused Talon’s government of cracking down on dissent through arbitrary detentions, restrictions on demonstrations, and pressure on independent media.

Lawmakers scrapped presidential age limit last year, allowing incumbent Ismail Omar Guelleh to compete for another term.

Voters in Djibouti are heading to the polls to choose their next president, with incumbent leader Ismail Omar Guelleh expected to easily secure a sixth term after politicians last year scrapped presidential age limits.

Just over 256,000 voters are eligible to cast ballots in Friday’s election between Guelleh, 78, and his only opponent, Mohamed Farah Samatar, the leader of the Unified Democratic Centre (CDU), a party with no seats in parliament.

At city hall, where Guelleh is due to vote, only a handful of voters had turned up when the doors opened, with turnout remaining generally low in the early hours, AFP reported. In the capital, Djibouti City, some polling stations opened late, the news agency said.

Human rights groups have accused authorities of abuses and repressing freedom of political activity. The government has denied the allegations. Two of the main opposition parties have boycotted elections since 2016.

Polling stations will close at 6pm local time (15:00GMT). Provisional results are expected shortly after or by Saturday morning, according to electoral authorities, as reported by the state-run news agency.

Several international organisations are observing voting, including the African Union (AU), the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the League of Arab States.

Guelleh has governed the small nation in the Horn of Africa since 1999, when he succeeded Hassan Gouled Aptidon, the founding president of the country with about a million people.

Guelleh won re-election in 2021 with 98 per cent of the vote.

‘We have preserved peace’

Though Guelleh was originally ineligible to stand in this election due to age limits, politicians removed the restriction last year, paving the way to extend his 27-year rule.

“The scrapping of term limits in Djibouti is less about electoral competition and more about preserving regime continuity in a highly strategic state,” Mohamed Husein Gaas of the Raad Peace Research Institute told the Associated Press news agency.

“While it raises concerns about democratic backsliding, external actors are likely to prioritise stability given Djibouti’s critical role in Red Sea security and global trade routes, especially amid ongoing tensions in the Middle East,” he said.

Stability was key in Guelleh’s election campaigning.

“Let us remember we have managed to maintain the stability of our country in an unstable region. We have preserved peace when others have descended into chaos,” he said last month.

Djibouti hosts important military bases for the United States, France, China and other powers, earning it a reputation as the country with the most foreign military bases. It is also an important port hub for landlocked neighbours such as Ethiopia.

Since 2023, several commercial ships damaged in attacks by Houthi fighters in Yemen have docked there.

The recently revised food pyramid may put fruit as a medium priority, but there is nothing the Trump administration likes more than the apple of discord.

Every news cycle, the president seems intent on introducing something new for Americans to argue about: the wisdom (and legality) of war in Iraq; the term “affordability”; the efficacy of mail-in ballots (which the president recently used); the meaning of birthright; the legitimacy of a vice president who has been publicly admonished by two popes for writing a book about his conversion to Catholicism — heck, we’re still arguing about that new food pyramid.

But there is one recent development upon which we really should all agree — erecting a gold statue of President Trump in the middle of his proposed presidential library is a No Good, Very Bad Idea.

On Tuesday, the president’s son Eric posted a first-look video for said library, which will reside on the waterfront in Miami. While questions were raised about the inclusion of the Boeing 747-8 the president controversially accepted as a gift from Qatar and the apparent lack of space in the sky-scraping library for, you know, books, it was the enormous gold statue of Trump towering over the stage in a proposed auditorium that drew the most immediate attention.

That Trump chose to reveal this little (well, actually quite big) beauty mere days after millions of Americans across the country participated in a coordinated No Kings march can be taken as either breathtaking irony or, more probably, a rage-baiting metaphoric middle finger.

As he has been recently wont to do, California Gov. Gavin Newsom quickly responded on his press office X account with photos of gold statuary depicting former chairman of the Chinese Communist Party Mao Zedong, North Korea’s Kim Il-Sung and Turkmenistan’s Saparmurat Niyazov and the observation that “The gold statue in Trump’s new library (of himself) looks awfully familiar to a few others from around the world.”

Trump’s obsession with gold will no doubt obsess future generations of historians, artists, psychoanalysts and Wikipedia editors — the guerrilla art group Secret Handshake on Monday put up a gold toilet statue on the National Mall mocking the president’s plans to renovate the Lincoln bathroom during a time of war and strife, as tribute, according to the statue’s plaque, “to an unwavering visionary who looked down, saw a problem and painted it gold.”

But even allowing for personal taste, a big golden statue of Trump is a terrible idea. For him.

In times of trouble and/or leadership changes, statues are often the first to go — as Trump knows well, since he’s working to replace the Confederate generals displaced after the Black Lives Matter movement and recently erected, near the White House, a replica of the Christopher Columbus statue thrown into Baltimore’s Inner Harbor during 2020 protests.

After hearing the Declaration of Independence read publicly for the first time, members of the Sons of Liberty tore down a statue of King George III from Bowling Green; during the French Revolution, the kings all across Paris came down; ditto Napoleon when he fell out of favor. In Russia, tsarist monuments were replaced by statues of Communist leaders, which in turn were torn down — statues of Stalin also fell in Hungary, Georgia and Albania. More recently, a statue of Saddam Hussein famously met the same fate.

As Robert Frost might have put it: Something there is that doesn’t love a statue of a divisive leader. Especially if it’s gold.

OK, I added that last bit.

There are plenty of famous and popular gold statues — Thailand’s Golden Buddha; the Golden Madonna of Essen in Germany; Jeanne d’Arc in Paris; Prometheus at Rockefeller Center in New York; even Tutankhamun’s death mask and solid gold coffin, which travel the world. But, as perhaps you have noticed, they trend toward the religious, mythic or historic, i.e. dead.

In the lavish memorial erected by his grieving widow, Queen Victoria, Prince Albert is golden, but few world leaders are permanently gilded, and certainly not before their deaths. (London’s golden statue of King Charles II was erected during his lifetime but originally in bronze — the gold was added later. It also depicts Charles in Roman garb, so I suppose the Trump statue could be worse — at least we don’t see his naked knees.)

In the United States, golden statuary is rare and usually metaphoric — the Oregon Pioneer, the Golden Driller, the Spirit of Communication. Gold remains captivating, an aspirational symbol of success (“gold standard”) and wealth (“golden touch”), but it can also bring with it an air of mockery (“golden boy”) and warning. The original golden touch belonged to King Midas, who loved it until he accidentally killed his daughter by turning her into a gold statue.

Displays of it, particularly in architecture or public art, are often perceived as tacky, kitschy or, heaven forbid, nouveau riche. Trump is fine being perceived as all of these things; he has long embraced the gleaming excesses of Versailles — the golden elevator will also be featured in the new proposed library.

His personal taste is his right and is shared by many.

In terms of statuary, however, “golden” is most typically associated with “idol,” figures that are erected specifically to be worshiped — the Golden Calf that made God and Moses so angry comes to mind — and Americans, historically, have not been big fans of idolatry.

Hence the separation of church and state, a three-branch government and a president with a limited term. The early colonists were very much anti-idol worshippers and even modern Catholics, as Vice President Vance surely knows, have long been criticized by their Protestant counterparts for a love of statuary, reliquaries and other iconography that some have argued fall into idolatry.

Trump clearly has no problem with idolatry, as long as he is the idol in question — he has long characterized his supporters as people who will love him no matter what he does. So no one should be surprised that his son would anchor the Trump presidential library with an enormous golden statue of his father — Trump is not a man to be satisfied with bronze or, heaven forbid, a marble bust.

No doubt, any criticism of that statue will be met with derision from Trump supporters. In its many guises, idolatry has survived, despite regular and often cataclysmic proof of its dangers, for centuries and many people will consider a much-larger-than-life golden statue of a president to be perfectly splendid.

But someone might want to mention to the president that flashing a big gold statue of himself while cities are still doing cleanup from enormous No Kings marches might seem funny to some. But to others … well, Versailles was once a dazzling royal residence.

Until it wasn’t.

March 23 (UPI) — With just weeks to go before the April 12 general elections, Peru’s electoral landscape is defined by unprecedented fragmentation and a voter base that appears to be turning away from the traditional political class.

Right-wing candidates Keiko Fujimori and Rafael López Aliaga remain virtually tied for first place in national popularity, according to a Datum Internacional poll for the newspaper El Comercio, published Sunday.

However, analysts say the figure that truly dominates the race is not any candidate’s percentage, but rather the 57% of Peruvians who still do not know whom they will vote for or who plan to cast a null ballot.

The public opinion survey showed that only 43% of Peruvians say they have decided on their vote and will not change it. According to data collected by the pollster, this scenario has remained stable since the beginning of the month, Canal N reported.

Datum analyst and CEO Urpi Torrado said the real protagonist of this process is the “undecided bloc.” According to her assessment, the disconnect is so deep that 53% of voters admit they do not even know the party symbol of the candidate they say they will support.

The results show a technical tie at the top, but with extremely low figures for a race of this magnitude. Keiko Fujimori, of Fuerza Popular, leads with 11.9%, followed closely by Rafael López Aliaga, of Renovación Popular, with 11.7%.

Further behind are rising figures such as leftist Alfonso López Chau with 6.5%, actor Carlos Álvarez with 5.0% and social democrat Jorge Nieto with 4.6%.

Analyst Carlos Meléndez told television channel Latina Noticias that this dispersion of votes, spread across a record 36 candidates, ensures that the June 7 runoff would be decided by very narrow margins.

Analyst Pedro Tenorio said that 75% of citizens believe the candidates do not understand their real problems. Even so, he noted a trend toward center and right-wing positions, which together account for 52% of voter identification, compared with a weakened 11% identifying with the left.

According to experts, the risk is that the next president could come to power with very weak initial legitimacy, facing an equally fragmented bicameral Congress that could deepen political instability and legislative gridlock.

The overall political environment is one of extreme fragility. Unlike previous processes, there is no “coattail effect” or consolidated ideological currents. The prevailing sentiment is rejection, with 81% of the population saying they do not feel represented by any political group.

This detachment has translated into a subdued campaign, where candidates struggle to break through a ceiling that does not exceed 15%.

The emergence of figures such as Wolfgang Grozo, a retired major general and former director of intelligence of the Peruvian Air Force, who has risen in the polls thanks to a strong presence on Instagram and TikTok, shows that sustained anti-establishment sentiment could trigger a last-minute shift among undecided voters and drastically alter the race.

This scenario is not unfamiliar in Peru. In the 2021 general elections, Pedro Castillo staged one of the biggest political upsets in the country’s history, going from a virtually invisible candidate in the polls to winning the presidency in a context of extreme fragmentation.

At that time, weeks before the first round, Castillo, a primary school teacher and union leader from Cajamarca, appeared in the “others” category with less than 3% voting intention. His rise was explosive in the final 10 days, driven by intensive campaigning in rural areas that urban polls failed to capture in time.

Castillo won the first round with just 18.9% of valid votes. It was the first time in the country’s history that a candidate advanced to the runoff with such limited support, highlighting a total crisis of representation among the 17 candidates competing in that election.

Reporting from El Progreso, Honduras — Not long after Jesuit priest Jack Warner met a bearded, 22-year-old Midwesterner in 1980, the two Americans bonded, drawn together by the goals and questions that led them both to El Progreso, a small city not far from vast banana fields — the campos bananeros.

Warner was 35 and had arrived a year earlier to form the Teatro La Fragua, a theater company for Hondurans. As the young priest looked to forge a relationship with the campesinos, his friendship blossomed with Tim Kaine, who had taken a year off from Harvard Law School to join the Jesuit mission.

“He was 22 years old,” Warner said, “and it was the typical thing that a 22-year-old would do: What do I do with my life?”

Kaine, now a 58-year-old U.S. senator from Virginia and the Democratic vice presidential nominee, has often said that his time in Honduras helped him answer that question, giving him “a North Star” to guide his life toward public service. It’s central to his biography and likely to arise Tuesday night when he debates his Republican opponent, Mike Pence.

Election 2016 | Live coverage on Trail Guide | Sign up for the newsletter

When Kaine traveled to Honduras, the nation was in the throes of turmoil, flanked by countries torn by civil war and ruled by the heavy hand of a U.S-backed military bent on stamping out what it perceived to be communism spreading in the region.

“I got a firsthand look at a system — a dictatorship — where a few people at the top had all the power and everyone else got left out,” Kaine said in July at the Democratic National Convention.

He also witnessed extreme poverty. His experiences, coupled with the Jesuit goal of being “men for others,” led him to become a civil-rights lawyer for 17 years, specializing in housing-discrimination cases. Honduras convinced him, he said, “that we’ve got to advance opportunity for everyone.”

Kaine now serves on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and this year co-sponsored a bill that would increase aid to Central America’s “Northern Triangle” — Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

Key to his experiences in Honduras was the friendship and example of Warner and a handful of other Jesuits. And a Christmastime visit to a poor man’s house taught him a lesson that resonates decades later.

During his time in El Progreso, Kaine lived in a barracks, along with Warner and other Jesuits. After their work days wrapped up about 5 p.m., he and Warner frequently commiserated over office duties, students, the teatro and the poetry Kaine was writing. Warner, a former English teacher, worked with Kaine on his verse. Over time, they became confidants.

Father Jack Warner admires a painting created by an actor who performs in the Teatro la Fragua in El Progreso, Honduras.

(Veronica Rocha / Los Angeles Times )

Both men grew up in the Midwest — Kaine in the Kansas City, Kan., suburb of Overland Park; Warner in St. Louis — and had been drawn to the Jesuit mission of social justice from an early age.

Kaine attended Rockhurst High School for boys, run by Jesuit priests who ran a demanding schedule of daily Masses, theology classes and community service activities with retreats.

Kaine, who earned a bachelor’s degree in economics at the University of Missouri, was at Harvard Law when he began to question his faith and the path he should take in life, he says. Because he had made a brief trip to Honduras in 1974 to deliver donations to the Jesuits, he decided to write them and see whether they could use some help. They said yes.

“He took a rather strong decision to seek out an answer — not everyone comes to Progreso,” Warner said.

Kaine had to tell his law school dean, and his parents, of this new direction. “The dean, not to mention my parents and friends, were confused about what I was doing and even questioned whether I would come back,” Kaine once recalled in a Virginia Tech speech.

By September 1980, Kaine was rumbling along in a bus into northern Nicaragua, where he visited another American Jesuit, Father James Carney. In Honduras months earlier, Carney had encouraged peasants to fight for their land, and he was expelled by the Honduran military, which saw him as one of the leftist priests who embraced liberation theology and the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua.

Activists, some of them priests or the peasants they worked with, would be banished or killed by authorities. Carney would later disappear in what was believed to be a clandestine Honduran military operation backed by the CIA.

“It was a time when anytime the police stopped you, you got really nervous. You never knew what was going to happen,” Warner recalled. “We were under a military dictatorship at the time and very heavy military control. It was scary, and one had to live very carefully.”

In El Progreso that September, Kaine soon met another Jesuit, Brother James O’Leary, a missionary also from Missouri.

O’Leary, who died in 2002, was often described as an outspoken, occasionally cranky but also skilled carpenter, painter and electrician who built houses and chapels for the poor. Kaine worked with him at his Loyola Technical Vocational Center, helping to boost the school’s enrollment and teaching carpentry and welding. As a youngster, Kaine had picked up skills working in his father’s ironworking shop in the Kansas City area.

Kaine declined to be interviewed for this story, but in a speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, he recalled what O’Leary taught him.

“I learned from a great mentor there, Brother Jim O’Leary, that faith is about more than words or doctrine — it’s about action,” he said. “And that led me to spend my life in public service.”

One of Kaine’s former students at the vocational center, Alex Hernandez Monroy, recalled the daily lessons in carpentry and welding from the shaggy-haired young American.

“His Spanish wasn’t very good, but despite all that he interacted with us,” said Hernandez Monroy, then 13 and now 48. Although Kaine couldn’t pronounce certain words, the students appreciated his efforts.

“Something very important that he did was that he visited the families of the students,” he said. “We were not used to interacting with Americans, so it had an impression on us to see someone like him educating us.”

Their debate might not matter much, but Mike Pence and Tim Kaine would be key White House players »

Using some of the skills he learned from Kaine and O’Leary, Hernandez Monroy teaches carpentry to a group of 15 students at the school. “They taught us that we could help our kids,” he said. “The majority of our youth are at risk, so that left an impression on us.”

::

About 35,000 people lived in El Progreso in 1980, when it was dominated by the presence of the United Fruit Co., the world’s largest — and often exploitative — banana company. Today it has a population of about 200,000, and the winding roads leading to the city are lined by brightly colored, one-story concrete homes.

During Kaine’s time there, however, it was a collection of dusty, rural villages and banana camps, with mountaintop towns accessible only by foot or mule. As a center for union activity, it became a target of the communism-fearing Reagan administration.

While war raged in neighboring El Salvador and Nicaragua, Honduras remained calm — but was gripped in fear. It was the staging ground for many of the United States’ clandestine operations aimed at toppling other governments.

People dared not speak about activism or union organizing lest they risk being among those who “disappeared.” More than a dozen priests were killed in the 1970s and 1980s after being associated with liberation theology, considered a Marxist-tinged doctrine that preached to the poor.

While Catholic priests in Central America were attacked for advocating on behalf of the poor, Kaine maintained a low profile and didn’t attract notice from the military.

Warner, a slender man with gray shoulder-length hair, recalled Kaine’s time in Honduras during a recent interview at the theater in El Progreso.

“His interest was in the students and what he was doing in his work, which is what we were all doing,” Warner said. “Trying to figure how we can do the work without being kicked out of the country for exploring it.”

Kaine also saw poverty and expressed his feelings about it through writing, as did Warner.

The priest maintained a daily newsletter with accounts of poverty and life in El Progreso. “We all have our defenses to shut out the existence of human misery, most of which consist of closing our eyes and pretending it doesn’t exist,” Warner wrote in a December 1980 newsletter. “Hopelessness then becomes a way of life for both parties.”

Warner published one of Kaine’s poems, titled “Still Life,” in which he described the “thick misery” of the town of San Pedro Sula. “In the saddest slum of San Pedro, lives are played out in the shade of a highway where buses glide like lost thoughts overhead.”

He likened the challenges, or “questions marks” facing the town to fingers testing the wind. “Each predicts change that just won’t come.”

Kaine spent nine months in El Progreso before returning to Harvard. He has kept in occasional touch with Warner and has returned to Honduras several times, most recently last year. This year, he and 25 senators called for an end to immigration raids in the U.S. targeting women and children who were fleeing violence in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.

When he accepted the nomination for vice president, Kaine said that the three basic values he absorbed in Honduras hold true today: “Fe, familia y trabajo.” Faith, family and work.

Students take a break before heading to class to learn carpentry at Loyola Technical Vocational Center, where Tim Kaine volunteered, in El Progreso, Honduras.

(Veronica Rocha / Los Angeles Times )

“I came to understand the power of faith and communal worship,” Kaine said at Virginia Tech in 2006. “I learned how to speak Spanish and began to understand how the things which can seem to divide us — like language and skin color — were so much smaller than the dreams and fears that unite us.”

Kaine also has repeatedly recalled what became one of his most indelible memories of Honduras.

He and Father Jarrell Wade, a Jesuit known as Father Patricio, had traveled by mule to visit a dirt-poor family around Christmas. As they prepared to leave, the husband handed Wade a bag. “Merry Christmas, padre,” he said.

Inside the worn bag were fruits and vegetables he had saved for the priest. Wade took the bag and thanked him.

Kaine was appalled and angered that the priest would take food from such a poor family — “I was fuming” — until Wade imparted the lesson: “You must be really humble to accept a gift of food from a poor person, and the most important thing in life is the ability to give.”

veronica.rocha@latimes.com

Twitter: @VeronicaRochaLA

Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson in Washington contributed to this report.

ALSO

Tax troubles threaten Trump as election day nears, and so does his own approach to campaigning

These donors gave to Trump’s GOP rivals. Now 95% are sitting out the general election

Trump wanted to fire women who weren’t pretty enough, say employees at his California golf club

March 12 (UPI) — Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and right-wing Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro are tied for the first time for a potential runoff after the Oct. 4 presidential election, according to a poll released Wednesday. A runoff would be Oct. 25.

The survey found each candidate with 41% support in a hypothetical second round.

Bolsonaro, a member of the Liberal Party and son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, leads among voters who identify as independent, a shift that could give him an edge.

Among independents, Bolsonaro gained 6 percentage points and would lead Lula 32% to 27% in a runoff scenario. Another 36% said they would not vote and 5% were undecided.

The gap between the two candidates has narrowed steadily, from 10 points in December to seven in January, five in February and zero in March, according to the survey conducted by polling firm Quaest and commissioned by Genial Investimentos.

Similar trends have appeared in other recent polls. A Datafolha survey published Saturday showed Lula with 46% support compared with 43% for Bolsonaro.

Quaest tested first- and second-round scenarios with eight potential candidates. In first-round simulations, Lula leads in two scenarios and is statistically tied with Bolsonaro in five others. Lula’s support ranges between 36% and 39%, while Bolsonaro’s support ranges between 30% and 35%.

Felipe Nunes, Quaest’s director, said Bolsonaro’s gradual rise began after his father publicly named him as a potential candidate in December.

“Flávio has managed to consolidate Bolsonaro’s electorate. He has grown among right-wing voters and improved his performance among independent voters,” Nunes said, according to news website O Globo.

The poll also showed worsening public assessments of the government and the economy.

Both Lula and Bolsonaro face high rejection rates, with 56% of respondents saying they would not vote for Lula and 55% saying the same about Bolsonaro.

“The shift over time is striking. In December, Lula had much greater potential and lower rejection. Now, both have similar levels,” Nunes said.

The survey found 48% of Brazilians believe the economy has worsened over the past 12 months, while 24% say it has improved. In February, negative perceptions stood at 43%.