Flavio Bolsonaro leads Lula as Brazil election heads to runoff
Brazil’s presidential election is headed to a runoff, with right-wing Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, leading incumbent left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
With 88% of polling stations reporting, Bolsonaro had received 48.19% of the vote, compared with Lula’s 43.81%, according to the official tally.
Under Brazilian election rules, a presidential candidate must secure more than 50% of valid votes to win in the first round. With neither Bolsonaro nor Lula reaching that threshold, the two will face each other in a runoff on October 25.
The election is widely seen as a highly polarized contest over Brazil’s political direction, pitting Lula’s left-wing agenda against Bolsonaro’s conservative platform, which emphasizes tougher measures against crime and the protection of “traditional values.”
The vote also presents a foreign-policy choice, as Lula has sought to strengthen Brazil’s role in BRICS and deepen ties with China and other Global South powers, while Bolsonaro has emphasized closer relations with Washington and touted his ties to US President Donald Trump.
Lula served as Brazil’s president from 2003 to 2011 and returned to office for a third term in 2023. He was barred from running in the 2018 election due to a corruption conviction and spent 580 days in prison. Brazil’s Supreme Court annulled his convictions in 2021, ruling that the court that tried him lacked jurisdiction, restoring his political rights and allowing him to run again.
Jair Bolsonaro, who served as president from 2019 to 2022, is serving a 27-year sentence after being convicted of attempting a coup following his defeat by Lula in the 2022 election. Both men have denied wrongdoing in their respective cases and argued that the prosecutions against them were politically motivated.
Bolsonaro’s other son, Eduardo, has lived in self-imposed exile in the United States since 2025. Brazil’s Supreme Court sentenced him in June to four years and two months in prison for coercion after finding that he had sought US pressure on Brazilian authorities in an effort to interfere with his father’s coup trial.
Brazilian authorities have also investigated alleged US interference in the country’s politics after Trump denounced the case against Jair Bolsonaro as a “witch hunt,” while Flavio and Eduardo Bolsonaro met the US president at the White House in May.
The election also brought victories for other members of the Bolsonaro family, with former first lady Michelle Bolsonaro elected to the Senate from the Federal District and Bolsonaro’s third son, Carlos, winning a Senate seat in Santa Catarina.
