Flávio Bolsonaro Tops Lula in Brazil First Round, Setting Up Oct. 25 Runoff

RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil’s presidential race is headed to a second round after Senator Flávio Bolsonaro finished first on Sunday ahead of incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a surprise result that set up an Oct. 25 runoff between the country’s right and left, according to coverage by CNN and Fox News.

Neither candidate cleared the more-than-50-percent share of valid votes required to win the presidency outright in the first round, according to CNN. With 99 percent of votes counted, Fox News reported Bolsonaro at 47.2 percent to Lula’s 44.9 percent, in a contest that most pre-election polls had shown Lula leading by a single-digit margin; CNN described the two as neck and neck on the eve of voting.

Bolsonaro, 45, is a senator and the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, whose political movement he is seeking to carry forward, according to CNN. Lula, 80, is seeking a fourth — and, as CNN reported, likely last — term after governing Brazil from 2003 to 2010 and returning to the presidency in 2023.

A first round that upended the polls

The geography of the vote helps explain the gap. According to Fox News, Bolsonaro carried São Paulo state, the country’s largest, by 52 percent to 38 percent, won the historic bellwether state of Minas Gerais by 50 percent to 43 percent, and took Rio de Janeiro by 53 percent to 39 percent. Lula ran up large margins in his traditional northeastern strongholds, including Bahia, Pernambuco and Ceará, according to Fox News, but those margins were not enough to offset Bolsonaro’s strength in the south.

The remaining candidates were eliminated. Four other contenders — the centrist psychiatrist and author Augusto Cury; Ronaldo Caiado, a former governor of Goiás; Renan Santos, a founder of the Movimento Brasil Livre running under the Missão party; and Romeu Zema, the former governor of Minas Gerais — trailed the two leaders, according to CNN. Together, those four won nearly 8 percent of the vote, according to Fox News, and their supporters’ second-round choices could decide the runoff.

Voting is compulsory for most adults in Brazil, the world’s fifth-largest country, and turnout is typically among the highest in the Americas, according to CNN.

Crime, costs and two foreign policies

Analysts quoted by CNN framed the runoff as a choice about Brazil’s direction 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 and vice president of policy at Americas Society/Council of the Americas, told CNN.

On domestic policy, CNN reported that security and crime have been central to Bolsonaro’s campaign, including proposals to designate major criminal factions as terrorist organizations, build new federal prisons and lower the age of criminal responsibility to 16. The campaign also played out against corruption scandals, deep polarization and voter fatigue, and against affordability concerns that, according to CNN, have left many Brazilians feeling their salaries do not stretch as far even when headline economic indicators look steadier.

Abroad, according to CNN, Lula has championed multilateralism and distanced Brazil from the United States, while a Bolsonaro victory could tilt the region’s largest country toward a growing conservative bloc aligned with U.S. President Donald Trump — extending a rightward shift CNN noted in recent elections in Colombia and Peru. Lula governed before from 2003 to 2010 and, after corruption convictions that Brazil’s Supreme Court annulled in 2021 restored his political rights, defeated Jair Bolsonaro in 2022, according to CNN. The elder Bolsonaro is barred from running and is serving a 27-year sentence after being convicted of attempting a coup to overturn his 2022 election loss, according to CNN. The runoff campaign begins with Bolsonaro holding the first-round lead — and with the first vote in Brazil having already shown how far the polls can miss.

Reporting based on coverage by CNN and Fox News.