Far-right candidate expected to win Brazilian presidency

A Brazilian woman votes
(Image credit: Daniel Ramalho/Getty Images)

Brazilians head to the polls Sunday for a runoff vote between the two presidential candidates who performed best in a prior round earlier this month.

Far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro, who has been compared to President Trump, is expected to win. He narrowly failed to secure an outright victory in the first vote, and polling gave him a shrinking but still sizable lead heading into this weekend.

Bolsonaro's rival is Fernando Haddad of the leftist Workers Party. Haddad has gained momentum in recent days but took less than one-third of the initial vote.

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Though he has praised Brazil's former military dictatorship, defending torture and extrajudicial killing, Bolsonaro is seen as an anti-corruption populist. Haddad represents the party of former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who is in jail on corruption charges.

Results are expected Sunday night.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.