BRASILIA — Brazilians voted Sunday in a presidential election pitting 80-year-old incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva against Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the eldest son of jailed former president Jair Bolsonaro, in a race that has drawn open involvement from U.S. President Donald Trump.
About 158.8 million voters are eligible to cast ballots between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. local time, according to election authorities cited by Reuters. If no candidate wins more than 50 percent of valid votes, the top two advance to a runoff on Oct. 25.
Final pre-election surveys published Saturday showed Lula holding a narrow lead but the outcome far from settled. A CNT/MDA poll had Lula at 43.1 percent to Flávio Bolsonaro’s 38 percent, with a runoff projection of 47.3 percent to 43.1 percent, Reuters reported. Datafolha put the first round at 45 percent to 42 percent, while Quaest had it nearly tied at 46 percent to 45 percent.
The elder Bolsonaro, convicted in September 2025 of plotting a coup to overturn his 2022 defeat, is serving a 27-year, 3-month sentence and is barred from running. He remains under humanitarian house arrest for health reasons, according to CNN.
Trump has openly promoted Flávio Bolsonaro as a “smart young man who loves his country” and called the elder Bolsonaro’s prosecution a “witch hunt.” The U.S. Treasury sanctioned Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes under the Global Magnitsky Act — a measure later lifted. Reuters reported last month that Brazilian intelligence officials briefed French and German counterparts about alleged U.S. and Russian election interference efforts.
Lula, president from 2003 to 2010, returned to power in 2023 after Brazil’s Supreme Court annulled earlier corruption convictions in 2021 and he narrowly defeated the elder Bolsonaro in the 2022 election. A victory would extend Workers’ Party rule; a Flávio Bolsonaro win would return the country’s most polarizing political family to the presidency within a generation.
