In a much tighter vote than the polls predicted, the former president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and the current president, Jair Bolsonaro, will have to face each other in the second round on October 30, after neither of the two candidates will reach this Sunday the 50% of votes necessary to proclaim himself the winner.
According to a note from BBC Worldwith 98.54% of the votes counted, Lula da Silva he had achieved 48.11% of the votes, compared to 43.47% for Bolsonaro. In the third position is Simone Tebet, with 4.19% of the votes, followed by Ciro Gomes, with 3.05%.
During the day this Sunday, 156 million Brazilians were called to the polls, and according to the latest polls, Lula was the leader in voting intentions, with an advantage of between 6 and 14 points over Bolsonaro.
In the second round on October 30, whoever gets the most votes will be declared president-elect, and will be sworn in on January 1, 2023. For his part, Bolsonaro arrives in the second round with an unprecedented task in Brazilian electoral history: beat the winner of the first round to win the elections.
“This narrow difference between Lula and Bolsonaro was not predicted,” said Nara Pavão, a political science professor at the Federal University of Pernambuco.
Meanwhile, Carlos Melo, a professor of political science at Insper University in Sao Paulo, explained: “It’s too early to go too deep, but this election shows that Bolsonaro’s victory in 2018 was not a setback.”
Bolsonaro outperformed in Brazil’s southeastern region, which includes the populous states of Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais, according to Rafael Cortez, who oversees political risk at consultancy Tendencias Consultoria. “The polls didn’t capture that growth,” Cortez said.
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