Brazil's presidential race will be decided in a second round after far-right candidate Flávio Bolsonaro beat incumbent leftwing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the first round, but failed to secure the outright majority needed to avoid a runoff.
With 99.9% of votes counted, the 45-year-old son of former president Jair Bolsonaro had won 47%, meaning he will face an 80-year-old rival in a 25 October showdown. Lula received 45.1% of the vote. Bolsonaro secured 56.1 million votes to Lula's 53.8 million.
Bolsonaro enters runoff as favourite
Bolsonaro will go into the second round as the strong favourite and is likely to be boosted by votes from other rightwing candidates, including Ronaldo Caiado, who secured 2.1%, and Renan Santos, who won 2.2%.
Brazil's far-right performed even stronger than expected, 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 senate seats. Bolsonaro's youngest son, Jair Renan, was elected to the lower house. 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.
Candidates react to the result
Flávio Bolsonaro told supporters in Brasília that the result signalled “the end of an era” for Lula's Workers' party. “Lula has fought seven presidential elections. He's worried about power. I am worried about the future of Brazil,” he said.
Speaking in São Paulo, Lula put a brave face on a difficult night for the left. “We have just had a lesson in Brazilian democracy,” he said. “The result is often unexpected. 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. “From tomorrow we will launch a new campaign: [and in] a campaign with only two candidates we will be able to show the difference between our proposals for Brazil.”
Earlier, as he cast his vote, Lula said Latin America's largest democracy faced a stark choice, highlighting his adversary's documented links to members of Rio's underworld, including once employing close relatives of a notorious contract killer.
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 this year.
Stakes and voter reactions
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 Brasília during an unsuccessful attempt to overturn the 2022 election result, when Lula beat 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 his defeat in the last election. Ahead of the election, he also called for tactical voting from conservatives who do not support 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 in Laranjeiras, one of Rio's most leftwing neighbourhoods, hoping to celebrate a Lula win to the sound of samba. But the mood soured as Bolsonaro's lead held. “It's so sad that the Brazilian people … have opted for so much retrogression,” said Marcelo Mac, one of the owners of Miolo, a leftwing bar in Laranjeiras. Mac, 46, voiced perplexity that the son of the man who tried to stage a coup only four years ago was now in pole position to become Brazil's next leader. “He's such an abominable guy that he manages to be even worse than his father,” Mac said of Bolsonaro.
Shop assistant Italo Andrade dos Santos, a 31-year-old Bolsonaro voter, kept his celebrations restrained behind the counter of the pharmacy where he was working a Sunday night shift. “I was a little disappointed because I expected Flávio to win in the first round. But I'm happy he's ahead,” said Santos, adding that he voted “more to get Lula out than for Flávio himself”.
Donald Trump became a key election issue, with Lula accusing the US president of trying to swing the vote in Bolsonaro's favour in order to “colonise” Brazil and appropriate its natural resources. Bolsonaro has vowed to build a closer relationship with Trump, who hopes a rightwing victory will help him further cement US control over Latin America after the election of pro-Trump leaders in a succession of countries, including Chile, Colombia and Peru.
