As expected, rightist Senator Flavio Bolsonaro and leftist incumbent Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva will face off in a presidential election runoff on 25 October.
Defying polls, Flavio Bolsonaro of the Liberal Party (Portuguese abbr: PL) came out on top in yesterday’s first round with 47.03 percent of votes to 45.16 percent for Lula of the Workers’ Party (Portuguese abbr: PT).
Augusto Cury of the centrist Avante party placed a distant third with 2.89 percent, far below the 10 percent he reached in polls in early September.
Bolsonaro holds the edge in the runoff, with most seemingly available votes available on the right.
He carried every state in the richer southeast yesterday and flipped the populous southeastern state of Minas Gerais, which has backed the winner of every presidential election since 1989.
Lula lost ground across the poorer northeast, his stronghold, winning a smaller share in all nine states than in 2022.
He has struggled to energize his base at a time when violent crime and corruption dominate voters’ concerns.
His narrow 2022 victory rode a wave of rejection of then-President Jair Bolsonaro, the populist father of the current candidate, who is now serving a 27-year prison sentence for attempting a coup after that defeat.
The Trump administration’s pressure campaign of the past two years to free the elder Bolsonaro gave Lula a lift in support, but many voters have hesitated to give him a fourth term at age 80.
Flavio Bolsonaro, 45, campaigned heavily on fighting crime, corruption and rising prices while calling for shrinking the state.
He proposes an El Salvador-style crackdown on the two largest criminal organizations, Sao Paulo’s First Capital Command (Portuguese abbr: PCC) and Rio de Janeiro’s Red Command (Portuguese abbr: CV).
He would declare them terrorist organizations, build maximum-security federal prisons and lower the age of criminal responsibility.
He has presented himself as more moderate than his father and spent the final weeks urging centrist voters to unite behind him in the first round.
Congressional elections also were held yesterday.
The right will dominate, although no party will have outright majority.
PL won 121 of the 513 seats in the Chamber of Deputies against 82 for the alliance led by the PT.
Center-right parties hold about 200 seats and remain the deciding bloc.
In the Senate, PL will hold 28 of 81 seats, the largest bench for any party at the start of a legislature in decades. The new PL senators include Jair Bolsonaro’s wife, Michelle, and son Carlos.
Voting yesterday was orderly and neither presidential candidate has disputed the count.
Political tensions and demonstrations could still increase in coming weeks, with street violence possible if the runoff result is narrow or contested.
Personnel should give wide berth to political gatherings and demonstrations.
