What does Lula need to win in the second round?

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, this Sunday after voting in São Paulo. Andre Penner (AP)

It was missing a little, but it was missing.

Lula da Silva is already very close to being the next president of Brazil, but she cannot wait to greet the public while she has not yet crossed the finish line.

It's not the first time an athlete has lost on the checkered line before breaking the tape.

There is an eternity left: four weeks that are very hard for any campaign.

The dilemma for today's winner is: continue with the same campaign, until the last electoral resistance is broken, or adapt it to an exercise of intelligent seduction of voters without a candidate and for still mobilizable abstentionists?

These may be some of the keys:

1. Almost everything starts over.

The same electoral night begins, de facto, the second round... and another campaign.

Tonight's speech, the staging, the visual and symbolic choreography, the energies that are transmitted and the digital strategies of the segmented schedule of that same night define a lot, a lot.

Lula should not focus on what has happened and on the result.

You have to think about the long four weeks to go.

You have to look at what is missing, not what you have.

The electoral night of any first round has great relevance for the "losers" (that is, for those who did not vote for the first or the second).

Also for those who abstained or voted blank.

These people will have to choose their second best option... or the least bad of the two that were left in the running.

There, that night, the decisions of those who really decide begin: the electoral orphans.

2. From candidates to presidential candidates.

Until today, there were several candidates.

But tonight only two presidential candidates.

And only one will be.

That is to say, the candidate begins to be evaluated and imagined as "possible -and real- next president".

The characteristics to be transmitted are others.

And even more so when the rival is the current president.

Those facing each other are no longer candidates, but two ways of understanding the presidency of

Brazilians.

This is the look.

This is what must be transmitted in form and substance.

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3. Differentiated messages for orphan voters.

We must build messages for voters without a candidate.

And work your installation very segmented.

The "orphan" voters who are on the borders, intersectional or soft votes... must "hear from the candidate" that the -future- president speaks to them, understands them, and will represent them.

Beyond the center-right origin of Lula da Silva's formula, the favorite comes to this election bringing together the entire left and center-left, which has never happened before.

But it was not enough.

4. A campaign for everyone.

The decisive voters want to know if the

opens the door to the idea of ​​the unity of the people of Brazil, of Brazilian society.

An ecumenical president, healer, integrator, facing a sectarian, toxic, divisive president.

That is what is at stake.

That is what Lula will have to position, quickly, to win tomorrow's polls and break away, even more from her rival.

The battle will be about unit versus division;

order instead of chaos;

democracy or dangerous autocracy.

Lula will have to convey in the next few hours that the real security is that Lula is president.

That he will govern for everyone, also for those who have not voted for him, nor will they vote for him.

That Brazil deserves to go from a presidency that divides Brazilians to one that unites them.

5. Very close, but still missing.

Humility is everything in politics, despite the great partial victory.

Lula bet on winning in the first round and it still hasn't been possible.

He begins a campaign that starts against the expectations created.

It was missing a little, but it was missing.

Let's see how it affects the environment of the teams and the candidate himself.

Jair Bolsonaro is not finished: the discourse of the combat of the caste has permeated very deeply.

And he is preparing his children to give continuity to his project.

The radicalization of the right is more important - and visceral - than social polarization.

We do not know if Bolsonaro has carried out this campaign -with this aggressiveness- for these elections or for the next ones.

A strategy that prepares an exit that allows him to return.

But his strength is still significant.

Lula has room to grow and add.

Bolsonaro only to destroy and divide,

from there, try it.

Whoever hits the most wins.

Lula depends on himself.

Another campaign begins today.

That of soft voters and orphans.

Lula will win if he is able to interpret them to represent them.

Antoni Gutierrez-Rubí

@antonigr