Brazil’s presidential election will be decided by tens of millions of poor people, and they look set to eject incumbent Jair Bolsonaro from office — either in Sunday’s first round or in a runoff.

The far-Right leader is reminding them of his pandemic welfare programme that morphed into a monthly handout equal to $112.

The race’s frontrunner, Leftist former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is rekindling memories of his 2003-2010 presidency when many poor Brazilians could suddenly afford beer and barbecue on the weekends. In 2014, the UN removed Latin America’s biggest country from its Hunger Map.

Since then, Brazil’s economy fell into the dumps, rose to the doldrums and then fell back. This year, the economy started recovering again and unemployment is at its lowest since 2015, but many remain doing informal, occasional jobs, and rampant inflation put even sufficient basic food out of their reach.

Thirty-three million Brazilians were going hungry in the six months through April, according to a study by several non-profit organisations, including Oxfam. Both Bolsonaro and da Silva promise to boost government spending on the poor if they win, which would mean either skirting or scrapping a constitutional cap on expenses.