BRASILIA, Brazil — Brazil’s presidential election is heading to a runoff after a surprise first-round victory for right-wing Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, an ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, who will face leftist incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva after neither secured more than 50% of the vote on Sunday.
With nearly all votes counted, Bolsonaro finished with about 47% of valid votes, roughly 56 million ballots, to Lula’s 44.9%, about 53.7 million votes, according to data from Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court reported by CNN and Al Jazeera. The result stunned pollsters: final surveys had shown Lula narrowly ahead or the two effectively tied, with Bolsonaro mostly in the low-to-mid 40s.
The two will compete again in the second round on October 25, with the next presidential term to begin in January. Voting is compulsory for most adults in the world’s fifth-largest country, and about 160 million registered voters were eligible to cast ballots on Sunday.
Bolsonaro, the 45-year-old son of imprisoned former President Jair Bolsonaro, called his first-place finish “the end of the PT era,” referring to Lula’s Workers’ Party, and repeated one of his campaign’s central proposals: ending presidential reelection in Brazil. “I only need one term,” he told supporters in Brasilia.
Lula, 80, who is seeking an unprecedented fourth term, acknowledged the outcome was unexpected. “I confess I was convinced I would win the election in the first round,” he told supporters at a hotel in São Paulo late Sunday. “Starting tomorrow, we begin a new campaign,” he added, joking that he is very good in the knockout stage.
The runoff gives voters a stark choice over Brazil’s future at home and abroad. “It’s two competing visions of what the country should look like and what Latin America should look like,” Brian Winter, editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly, told CNN.
