Far-right candidate wins first round of voting in Brazil's presidential election

(Image credit: Evaristo Sa/AFP/Getty Images)

last updated 8 October 2018

Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right candidate who has drawn comparison to President Trump, won almost half of the vote in the first round of Brazil's presidential election on Sunday.

With 98 percent of ballots counted, Bolsonaro has 46.43 percent of the vote; had he reached 50 percent, Bolsonaro would have hit the threshold needed to avoid a runoff on Oct. 28. His closest competitor was Fernando Haddad of the leftist Workers Party, who received 28.7 percent of the vote.

Bolsonaro, a seven-term congressman who was stabbed last month while campaigning, has praised the country's former military dictatorship, made inflammatory comments about women, minorities, and the LGBT community, and said he will push for development in the Amazon. Like Trump, he has been married three times and uses social media heavily. "For someone with no TV time, a small party, no political funds, and who has been hospitalized for 30 days, this is a great victory," he said Sunday night.

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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.