Brazilians will vote in a contentious race for the presidency on Sunday, choosing between wildly different visions of their future offered by incumbent Jair Bolsonaro and his rival Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Lula, a charismatic former president beset by bribery allegations, narrowly won a first-round election and is going into the final as a slight favorite with 52 percent of voter support, according to a final poll by the Datafolha Institute on Saturday.

However, Bolsonaro, who scored 48 percent in the poll, did better than expected last time out and many pundits see the election as too short to announce.

“This is going to be a messy election … It’s a lot closer than anyone thought,” Americas Quarterly editor-in-chief Brian Winter told AFP.

The election showdown caps months of mudslinging and personal attacks between the two men in a sordid campaign that has been riddled with disinformation and deeply polarized the nation of 215 million people.

Lula has called Bolsonaro a “cannibal,” “pedophile,” and “petty dictator.” In return, he was repeatedly taunted as a “thief” and accused of making a pact with Satan.

Both candidates have their die-hard supporters, but many will only vote for the candidate they loathe least — or spoil their ballots.

Exhausted and on raw nerves after a bitterly divisive election campaign, Brazilians are voting for two vastly different visions for their country, with everything at stake.

The election has global ramifications: conservationists believe the outcome will seal the fate of the stricken Amazon rainforest, which has been marginalized by fires and deforestation under Bolsonaro.

For Brazilians, however, problems such as poverty, hunger, corruption and traditional values ??are in the foreground.

An editorial in Nature magazine this week called Bolsonaro’s “striking” record “disastrous for science, the environment, the people of Brazil — and the world.”

Despite the clamor from abroad, the Amazon was only touched upon briefly in debates.

Lula, Brazil’s president from 2003 to 2010, told voters the election was a choice between “democracy and barbarism, between peace and war”.

One of the main questions hanging over the poll was whether Bolsonaro – often referred to as “Tropical Trump” – will accept a loss after saying the very electoral system that brought him to power was riddled with fraud.

On Friday night he vowed to respect the election, saying “whoever gets the most votes wins” despite possible allegations of rigging and backlash from his constituents lurking over the election.

Bolsonaro has come under fire for his disastrous handling of the Covid pandemic, which has claimed more than 680,000 lives, as well as his acrimony and contempt for political correctness.

In recent months, however, it has been buoyed by falling unemployment, slowing inflation and a faster-than-expected economic recovery from the pandemic.

His key supporters – business, anti-corruption voters and the powerful Bibles, Bullets and Beef coalition – love his hard-edged style and focus on conservative values.

Lula was the country’s most popular president when he left office, and his social programs helped lift millions out of poverty.

However, he then became caught up in a massive corruption scandal and was jailed for 18 months before his convictions were overturned last year. The Supreme Court found the lead judge biased, but Lula was not exonerated.

A win would be a spectacular comeback, but he faces weakening from a hostile Congress dominated by Bolsonaro’s lawmakers and allies.

“It’s not just the next four years at stake,” said an editorial in the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper on Saturday.

“It is the nearly four years of democracy in Brazil, a model anywhere in the world” that Bolsonaro is “threatening”. However, the newspaper notes that Lula is also “infested” with corruption.

Polling stations open at 8:00 a.m. (1100 GMT) local time to 156 million registered voters and close at 5:00 p.m. (2000 GMT). The result of the electronic vote is expected in a few hours.