The president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, voted this Sunday in the country’s presidential and legislative elections and assured that he will win the elections in the first round.
Bolsonaro went to vote at a polling station in Rio de Janeiro’s Villa Militar, dressed in a yellow sports shirt with a green collar and the national flag emblazoned on the chest, and apparently wearing a bulletproof vest underneath.
“We are calm (…) in the first round, the elections are decided today,” Bolsonaro said in brief statements to journalists as he left the electoral college.
The latest voting intention polls, released on Saturday, place Bolsonaro fourteen points away from the favorite candidate, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who could win in the first round.
In the event that none of the candidates reaches more than half of the valid votes, the two most voted will have to face each other in a second round scheduled for October 30.
On this day, which began at 08:00 local time (11:00 GMT) and will close at 17:00 (20:00 GMT), some 156.4 million voters are called to elect the president, the 27 governors, the 513 deputies, to a third of the Senate and to renew the representatives in the regional legislative assemblies.
This year’s elections, the most polarized since Brazil regained democracy in 1985, have been characterized by a climate of tension between Lula and Bolsonaro, a dispute that spread to his followers, with some cases of attacks and deaths motivated by arguments. policies.
EFE