Brazil’s closely watched presidential election is heading to a second round between leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and right-wing Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, prolonging a deeply polarised race with major implications for the country and the wider region. Brazil’s electoral court confirmed on Sunday that the two candidates will advance to a run-off on October 25 after neither won the majority needed to secure the presidency outright, with Bolsonaro leading at 55.8 million votes to Lula’s almost 53.2 million. Lula, 80, is seeking a fourth, non-consecutive term after a political career spanning nearly five decades.
Bolsonaro, 45, is the eldest son of former President Jair Bolsonaro and is trying to return his father’s right-wing movement to power, even as the former president serves a 27-year prison sentence for plotting a coup after losing the 2022 election. The election comes at a pivotal time for Latin America’s largest economy. Brazilians are grappling with concerns over crime and the cost of living, while the country faces an increasingly tense relationship with the United States.
The vote is also being closely watched across a region that has shifted sharply to the right in a series of recent elections. While a second round was widely expected, the first-round result did not play out quite as pollsters had predicted. Here are some of the key takeaways from the election so far.
With nearly 99 percent of votes reported, Bolsonaro had about 47 percent of valid votes, compared with 44.9 percent for Lula. Neither reached the 50 percent threshold needed to win in the first round. That sets up another Lula-Bolsonaro showdown, four years after Lula narrowly defeated former President Jair Bolsonaro.
This time, he will face the former president’s eldest son. The race could be extremely close, as polling ahead of Sunday’s vote suggested Lula and Flavio Bolsonaro were roughly tied in a potential run-off. That puts voters who backed one of the other 10 candidates in the first round at the centre of the fight for the presidency over the next three weeks.
Ronaldo Caiado and Renan Santos, who together received about 5.3 million votes, have previously said they will not endorse either candidate in the run-off. Most polls leading up to election day predicted the race would be pushed into the second round, but had Lula finishing the first round ahead of Bolsonaro. Instead, Bolsonaro emerged with a lead of two percentage points, raising questions about why the final polls underestimated his support.
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