Disinformation on social media has become routine as Brazil heads for deeply divisive elections, but it can gain traction and a wider audience if it comes straight from the mouths of candidates on national television.

The official start of campaigning for the general election on October 2nd last month means the candidates have a huge exposure on television, including prime-time interviews, debates and daily commercials paid for with public funds.

In practice, this means a deluge of false narratives is being beamed into Brazilian living rooms, whether it’s incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro embracing the idea of ??creating a mega-popular instant payments system called “Pix” or frontrunner Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva claimed he was acquitted of all corruption charges against him, to cite just two examples.

In reality, the Central Bank of Brazil began work on Pix in 2018, a year before the far-right incumbent took office. And Lula, the charismatic but ailing leftist who ruled Brazil from 2003 to 2010, had his controversial convictions in the Car Wash corruption scandal overturned on procedural grounds. He was not acquitted.

“Campaigns are, above all, a war of narratives,” and candidates often use distorted or outright false statements to sell themselves, says Amaro Grassi, public policy expert at the Getulio Vargas Foundation.

Lying in politics is nothing new.

But analysts warn that television is now giving a wider reach to the disinformation that has been raging on social media in Brazil for months.

“Television is still a mass medium” in Brazil, says Arthur Ituassu, associate professor of political communication at the Pontifical Catholic University in Rio de Janeiro.

Unlike social media, Brazilian television — where the vast majority of viewership is still concentrated in a handful of top networks, notably the dominant TV Globo — reaches a broad demographic that is “not inherently segmented,” he says .

“Television is still a space that reaches out to the general public and extends well beyond audiences who are already firmly in one camp or another,” says Helena Martins, communications professor at the Federal University of Ceara.

There’s also a common belief that “if it’s on TV, it’s true,” she adds.

The 2018 race that brought Bolsonaro to power was already riddled with disinformation, especially on social media – enormously powerful in a country that has more smartphones than people (an estimated 242 million out of a population of 213 million).

If anything, the campaign is arguably uglier this time around, as the race for the presidency is heavily polarized between the far-right incumbent and his left-wing nemesis.

Amid these deep divisions, 85 percent of Brazilians say disinformation could influence the outcome of the election, according to a poll by the Ipec Institute published on September 6.

At the same time, polls show that relatively few voters remain to be persuaded: 78 percent of voters say they have “completely made up their minds,” according to a Datafolha Institute poll released last week.

The same poll found Lula had 45 percent of the vote, versus 33 percent for Bolsonaro — broadly in line with the institute’s previous poll.

No other candidate was in double digits.

“There is a very high degree of consolidation of voter intentions. That makes it difficult to change the picture with narratives at this point,” says Grassi.

That hasn’t stopped candidates from irking their base with truth-bending statements in hopes of convincing the odd undecided or third-party voter in the process.

Lula, for example, has consistently exaggerated his achievements in business.

Bolsonaro, meanwhile, has accused Lula of being anti-evangelical and anti-agribusiness, two powerful groups leaning towards the incumbent.

“The idea is to reinforce these groups’ rejection of Lula,” says Grassi.

“Because in such a polarized election, for the most part, it ends in a fight of denial.”