Brazil presidential election: Bolsonaro and Lula head to run-off

(Image credit: Tuane Fernandes/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

published 3 October 2022

In Brazil, no presidential candidate earned enough votes on Sunday to win the election outright, forcing the top two — current President Jair Bolsonaro and former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — into a runoff on Oct. 30.

With about 99.6 percent of the votes counted, da Silva — known as Lula — has 48.3 percent of the vote, while Bolsonaro has 43.3 percent. Nine other candidates were also in the race.

The incumbent is a far-right populist, while Lula is a leftist. Polls heading into the election showed Lula with much more support than Bolsonaro, who ended up outperforming his poll numbers in Brazil's southeast region, The Associated Press reports. Ahead of Sunday's election, Bolsonaro questioned how legitimate the polling was and the accuracy of electronic voting machines, saying on Sept. 18 that if he didn't win the first round, something had to be "abnormal."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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