Brazil’s presidential race will go to a second round after the far-right candidate, Flávio Bolsonaro, beat the incumbent leftwing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, but failed to secure the outright majority he needed to avoid a runoff. With more than 99% of votes counted, the 45-year-old son of the disgraced former president, Jair Bolsonaro, had won 47.1%, meaning he will now face a 25 October showdown with his 80-year-old rival. Bolsonaro will go into the second round as favourite and is likely to be boosted by the migration of votes from the election’s other rightwing candidates, who included Ronaldo Caiado, who secured 2.1%, and Renan Santos, who won 2.2%.
Brazil’s far-right put in a stronger than expected showing, with a succession of Bolsonarista politicians winning congressional or gubernatorial races. They included Jair Bolsonaro’s second son, Carlos Bolsonaro, and his wife, Michelle Bolsonaro, who both won seats in the senate. Bolsonaro’s youngest son, Jair Renan, was elected to the lower house of congress.
Bolsonaro’s former infrastructure minister, Tarcísio de Freitas, was reelected as governor of São Paulo, Brazil’s most populous and economically important state. Of the 54 senators elected, 34 were from the right or far right. Speaking in Sāo Paulo, Lula put a brave face on a difficult night for the left. We can never get everything we wanted.
I confess to you that I was convinced I was going to win the election in the first round … But we have a second round.” Lula said Bolsonaro’s “dark past” would become clearer to voters in the lead-up to that vote. After voting in Rio, where the Bolsonaro political dynasty was born in the late 80s, Flávio Bolsonaro urged Brazilians to end what he called Lula’s “era of backwardness”. Lula, who became Brazil’s first elected working-class president in 2002 and was returned to office in 2006 and 2022, is hoping to secure a historic fourth non-consecutive term in this year’s election.
Allies of the veteran leftwinger called the election a crucial battle in the fight against a far-right movement that less than four years ago brought chaos to the capital, Brasília, during an unsuccessful attempt to overturn the result of the 2022 election, when Lula beat the incumbent president, Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro hopes winning the presidency will allow him to free his father, who is serving a 27-year sentence for plotting a failed coup after refusing to accept he had lost the last election to Lula. Ahead of the election he also called for tactical voting from conservatives who are not supporters of Bolsonarismo, but want to vote Lula out of power.
As well as the president, Brazil’s nearly 159 million voters were choosing state parliamentarians, 27 state governors, 513 members of the lower house and 54 members of the 81-seat senate. Bolsonaro supporters made the senate race a priority because senators are the only lawmakers who can impeach supreme court justices – a demand among Bolsonaristas since the court jailed the former president for attempting a coup. Hundreds of leftwingers had gathered at the heart of Laranjeiras, one of Rio’s most leftwing neighbourhoods, hoping to celebrate a Lula win to the sound of samba.
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