Kick-off approaches

“IT’S not about the 50 cents” reads a scrawl on a shop shutter on Avenida Faria Lima, one of São Paulo’s main thoroughfares. Next door, the message is blunter: “Screw the police”. Six months after a small demonstration against a 50-cent rise in bus fares blew up into the biggest street protests Brazil had seen in a generation, few visible signs remain of the wider anger they revealed—about corruption, poor public services and rising living costs. Recent attempts to organise a reprise have attracted only a few hundred marchers. Support for the president, Dilma Rousseff of the Workers’ Party, which plummeted after June’s protests, has rebounded. A poll in November of voting intentions in next October’s elections gave her 47%, against 30% for her two likeliest adversaries combined.

Even so, the race is hard to call. The same poll found that two-thirds of voters want Brazil’s next president to make sweeping, if unspecified, policy changes. That suggests the spirit of June is still alive—and that some of Ms Rousseff’s support could melt away if a strong alternative emerges. Political analysts say that many Brazilians’ voting strategy is to plump for the perceived front-runner, whoever that may be, meaning that a challenger who manages to advance in the polls could quickly take a commanding lead.