Brazil election

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has maintained a lead on right-wing incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro for months, according to polls.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Bolsonaro minimized the threat of the coronavirus and pushed back against preventative measures like lockdowns and masks, and he has sought to brand himself as a [tough-on-crime](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/06/jair-bolosonaro-says-criminals-will-die-like-cockroaches-under-proposed-new-laws) and socially conservative leader. [nicknamed](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/30/bolsonaro-trump-brazil-election-democracy/) the “Tropical Trump,” has often parallelled the former U.S. Bolsonaro was also one of few international leaders to [support](https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210107-brazil-s-bolsonaro-backs-trump-fraud-claim-after-unrest) Trump’s false allegations of fraud in the aftermath of the 2020 U.S. Trump announced last month he was [backing](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-08/trump-endorses-bolsonaro-s-stalled-re-election-bid-in-brazil) Bolsonaro in his re-election bid, writing on Truth Social Bolsonaro has “done a GREAT job for the wonderful people of Brazil,” and that “when I was President of the U.S., there was no other country leader who called me more than Jair.” A former trade unionist, Lula served as president for two terms, and he grew popular as he oversaw a period of strong economic growth, though a [wide-ranging investigation](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-33562055) into corruption and influence-peddling called “Operation Car Wash” began to look into him several years after he left office. If Lula wins, Brazil will be the latest Latin American nation whose voters have thrown their support behind leftist leaders: Chile elected 35-year-old Gabriel Boric last year, and Gustavo Petro was [elected](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/19/world/americas/gustavo-petro-colombia-presidential-election.html) to serve as Colombia’s first leftist president in June. [alleged](https://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2017/07/brazil-lula/533445/) Lula received more than a million dollars in bribes—including in the form of a luxury apartment—in exchange for contracts with Brazilian construction giant OAS, a subcontractor to state energy company Petrobras, part of a broader investigation that Lula’s supporters argued was rigged. Results are expected within hours after the polls close at 4 p.m. [Lula leads polls as Brazil votes in tense presidential contest](https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazil-votes-tense-lula-bolsonaro-presidential-contest-2022-10-02/) (Reuters) [What to Know About Brazil’s Election](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/30/world/americas/brazil-election-bolsonaro-lula.html) (New York Times) [Brazil polarised as Bolsonaro seeks re-election and Lula aims for comeback](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-63103323) (The BBC) ET (5 p.m. [platform](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/30/world/americas/brazil-election-bolsonaro-lula.html) of increasing taxes for the wealthy, raising the country’s minimum wage and bolstering social programs including monthly cash vouchers, while Bolsonaro has also pledged to offer cash programs for families in need, and has focused on tax cuts, abortion opposition and [addressing crime](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/02/brazil-ballot-military-police-election/). [advocated](https://www.npr.org/2022/10/01/1126161100/brazil-election-amazon-deforestation-forest-fires) for more mining, ranching and farming in the Brazilian Amazon, often drawing scorn from environmental groups, while Lula has pledged to [stop](https://grist.org/international/in-brazils-presidential-election-the-fate-of-the-amazon-is-at-stake/) illegal mining and fight against deforestation. [pushed](https://time.com/6218227/jair-bolsonaro-trump-brazil-election/) claims of election fraud without evidence and [suggested](https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazils-bolsonaro-says-may-not-accept-2022-election-under-current-voting-system-2021-07-07/) on several occasions he may not concede if he loses, reinforcing those remarks Sunday in a video posted before he cast his vote, in which he said if the country has “clean elections,” he will win “with at least 60% of the votes,” according to [Reuters](https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazil-votes-tense-lula-bolsonaro-presidential-contest-2022-10-02/).

Jair Bolsonaro is standing for a second term against former president Lula. Find out how votes are coming in across Brazil.

In 2018, Bolsonaro won a second-round run-off against Fernando Haddad, the candidate of Lula’s Workers’ party. If this does not happen in the first round, the top two candidates will go into a runoff election at the end of the month. A candidate needs more than 50% of the vote to be elected.

Brazil's national election authority on Sunday began reporting the initial results of the country's presidential election, in which leftist former President ...

With just 0.1% of voting machines counted, Lula had 51% of valid votes, compared to 37% for Bolsonaro, the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) reported on its website. If no candidate wins over half the votes, excluding blank and spoiled ballots, the top two will face off in a second-round vote on Oct. BRASILIA, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Brazil's national election authority on Sunday began reporting the initial results of the country's presidential election, in which leftist former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva aims to unseat incumbent Jair Bolsonaro.

Brazil's presidential election appears to be heading for a run-off, as far-right President Jair Bolsonaro's strong initial showing...

"Four years ago I couldn't vote because I was the victim of a lie ... The leftist, who was president from 2003 to 2010, was jailed during the last election. Maria Lourdes de Noronha, 63, said only fraud could prevent a Bolsonaro victory, adding that "we will not accept it" if he loses. Initial results do not always capture the full picture in Brazil's sprawling national elections. He has also repeatedly cast unfounded doubts on the country's electronic voting system, prompting fears he may refuse to accept defeat and spark an institutional crisis. A second-round vote could add to fierce polarisation and simmering political violence in Latin America's biggest country.

Brazilians vote in divisive polls pitting far-right President Jair Bolsonaro against left-wing frontrunner Lula.

“If we have clean elections, we will win today with at least 60 percent of the votes,” Bolsonaro said in a video posted on his social media. Bolsonaro voted in Rio and said he expected to win the election in Sunday’s first round, despite his poor showing in polls. At one point, Bolsonaro claimed to possess evidence of fraud, but never presented any, even after the electoral authority set a deadline to do so. Bolsonaro grew up in a family of modest means before joining the army. “This country needs to recover the right to be happy.” The university professor, 48, said Bolsonaro’s administration had been “catastrophic” for investment in culture, arts, science and education.

Brazil's president Jair Bolsonaro will face off against Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the leftwing former leader, in a runoff vote at the end of this month, ...

Acrimonious election will go to a second round after the former president failed to secure a majority over Jair Bolsonaro.

“It’s a very disappointing night for the left.” “The campaign begins tomorrow.” “There was a feeling among the left that Lula had a chance to win in the first round ... “We all thought Lula would win easily.” “I’m disappointed,” said Kharine Gil, a 23-year-old university student. I’m confident that he will win.” A Federal Police investigation accused the far-right ideologue of making it difficult for environmental crimes to be investigated. It is time to go out onto the streets... “I feel great hope that this election will be decided tomorrow, but if it isn’t we’ll have to behave like a football team when a match goes to extra time. “But the results show we do not have the time to rest now. Bolsonaro, who significantly out-performed pollsters’s predictions and will be buoyed by the result, received 43.3%. Salles, meanwhile, was the Environment Minister who presided over a sharp rise in Amazonian deforestation.

Neither presidential candidate got more than 50% of the overall vote, meaning they will face off on 30 October.

This is a drama which has been years in the making. Not surprisingly, that tension has filtered down into the streets. But with Mr Bolsonaro counting on the agricultural sector and agribusiness for votes and support, it is Lula who is the preferred choice of climate activists. During the nights before the vote, neighbours here in Rio could be heard shouting "Lula is a thief" and "Out with Bolsonaro" at each other. In the last TV debate before the vote, President Bolsonaro called Lula a thief, in reference to the corruption charges that put him in jail for 580 days before the conviction was annulled. For Lula - who could not run in the 2018 election because he was in prison after being convicted on corruption charges - this spells a remarkable comeback.

With 98.8% of he votes tallied on Sunday's election, former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva had 48.1% support and incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro had ...

He turned to politics after being forced out of the military for openly pushing to raise servicemen's pay. Asked if he would respect results, he gave a thumbs up and walked away. "I didn't like the scandals in his first administration, never voted for the Workers' Party again. Da Silva's own convictions for corruption and money laundering led to 19 months imprisonment, sidelining him from the 2018 presidential race that polls indicated he had been leading against Bolsonaro. With 98.8% of the votes tallied on Sunday's election, former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva had 48.1% support and incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro had 43.5% support. Bolsonaro grew up in a lower-middle-class family before joining the army. While voting earlier Sunday, Marley Melo, a 53-year-old trader in capital Brasilia, sported the yellow of the Brazilian flag, which Bolsonaro and his supporters have coopted for demonstrations. Israel's former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed gratitude for stronger bilateral relations and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban also praised him. Analysts fear he has laid the groundwork to reject results. The last Datafolha survey published Saturday found a 50% to 36% advantage for da Silva among those who intended to vote. A slow economic recovery has yet to reach the poor, with 33 million Brazilians going hungry despite higher welfare payments. He said as recently as Sept.

Former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the leftist Workers' Party got the most votes in Brazil's presidential election, but not enough to avoid a ...

Da Silva is credited with building an extensive social welfare program during his 2003-2010 tenure that helped lift tens of millions into the middle class. But he has built a devoted base by defending conservative values and presenting himself as protecting the nation from leftist policies that he says infringe on personal liberties and produce economic turmoil. Bolsonaro’s administration has been marked by incendiary speech, his testing of democratic institutions, his widely criticised handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and the worst deforestation in the Amazon rainforest in 15 years.

Brazil's presidential election is headed for a run-off vote, after President Jair Bolsonaro's surprising strength in a first-round vote spoiled rival Luiz ...

Maria Lourdes de Noronha, 63, said only fraud could prevent a Bolsonaro victory, adding that "we will not accept it" if he loses. Bolsonaro had questioned polls that showed him losing to Lula in the first round, saying they did not capture enthusiasm he saw on the campaign trail. But the vote, extending a tense and violent election by another four weeks, revitalised his campaign. Bolsonaro will arrive with a lot of strength for re-election." As neither got a majority of support, the race will go to a second-round vote on 20 October. Several opinion surveys had shown Lula leading Bolsonaro by 10-15 percentage points ahead of Sunday's vote.

The most-trusted opinion polls had indicated leftist former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was far out front, and potentially even clinching a first-round ...

Bolsonaro's Liberal Party will surpass da Silva's Workers' Party to become the biggest in the Senate. The difference between Bolsonaro and da Silva in the first round amounted to 6.1 million votes. His former Infrastructure Minister surprised by finishing first in the race to govern Sao Paulo. The governor of Rio de Janeiro, an ally, vanquished his opponent to win re-election outright. Speaking after the results, da Silva betrayed the fact he didn't even know for which date the runoff is scheduled. "People who were originally voting for Simone Tebet or Ciro Gomes [the third and fourth place finishers] decided at the last minute to vote for Bolsonaro." "The polls didn't capture that growth," he said. "This is a big defeat for the democratic centre that saw its voters migrate to Bolsonaro in a polarised scenario," said Arilton Freres, director of Curitiba-based Instituto Opiniao. He is also remembered for his political party's involvement in corruption scandals and his own convictions, which were later annulled by the Supreme Court, which ruled the judge had been biased. "I don't believe these polls by the Datafolha group. Da Silva is credited with building an extensive social welfare programme during his 2003-2010 tenure that helped lift tens of millions into the middle class and saw exports surge amid the global commodities boom. But he has built a devoted base by defending conservative values and presenting himself as protecting the nation from leftist policies that he says infringe on personal liberties and produce economic turmoil.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the left-wing former president, won more votes than right-wing incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro, but not enough to win outright ...

In the hours before the vote, he posted on his Twitter feed a video of former President Donald Trump urging people to vote for him. All this provided an opening for da Silva, who is now 76 and a survivor of throat cancer. Then, in a stunning turnaround, he was released on a technicality in 2019 and launched his campaign for the presidency — the sixth time he has run for the office. However, after leaving office he became ensnared in a wide-ranging corruption scandal that landed him in prison for a year and a half. Sunday's voting was largely peaceful after a contentious, sometimes violent campaign in which Brazil's democracy seemed to hang in the balance. In fact, da Silva trailed for much of the night before finally inching ahead and winning with about 47.9% of the vote, with about 97% of votes counted.

Lula and Bolsonaro go head-to-head after a closer than expected first-round result.

There's everything to play for in this presidential race - and everything to lose if you're on the wrong side. In the run-up to this vote, Bolsonaro repeatedly said that the polls were a lie - and to many it looked like he was just a bad loser. "There's going to be beautiful blood spilled in this city," Alessandro Ferreira Soares, a parachutist, told me if Lula takes the presidency. "We are going to win the elections again, it's just a question of time." In the past few weeks, there had been a concerted effort by his supporters to try and encourage wavering voters to choose Lula, to end the Bolsonaro presidency promptly. The polls released a day before the elections had predicted a 14 percentage point gap between Lula and Bolsonaro.

Closer than expected result in first round of voting means Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Jair Bolsonaro face runoff.

Comparing the prospect of a Bolsonaro defeat to Trump’s in the US, he said that both men would have lost “very narrowly, and mostly because of a freak cause (the pandemic) … The fact that the result now looks likely to be narrower than expected even if Lula wins “significantly increases the credibility of [the] “stolen elections” narrative among Bolsonaro supporters and thus the possibility of post-electoral violence,” Mudde wrote. Many in Brazil are fearful that Bolsonaro may stoke an anti-democratic mood among his supporters – though, perhaps scenting the possibility of a revival, he was noticeably quieter on his baseless fraud claims last night than he has recently been. A lot of people on the left have been frightened – one Lula supporter said to me on Saturday that it’s the first time in my life I’ve been scared to put a sticker on my car.” “People in the centre and on the centre right viewed this as an emergency election. [brutally murdered by a Bolsonaro supporter last month](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/15/jair-bolsonaro-brazil-political-violence-election), one of a string of violent attacks by supporters of a candidate who has demanded leftists “be eradicated from public life”. That is of global importance given the Amazon’s role as a store for carbon dioxide. [remembered by many in the country](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/05/brazilians-still-hold-great-affection-for-lula-despite-corruption-conviction) as an era of economic growth and declining inequality. On Sunday, he told reporters: “We want no more hatred, no more quarrelling, we want a country that lives in peace.” And progressives around the world were watching for an emphatic repudiation of Bolsonaro’s presidency that would signal that the forces of extremism were in retreat. “The mood among his opponents had been one of cautious optimism,” said Tom Phillips. At the very least, they hoped for a commanding margin and a sense of momentum going into a runoff between the two.

The result came as a surprise, since pre-election polls had given da Silva a commanding lead.

“I didn't like the scandals in his first administration, never voted for the Workers' Party again. He turned to politics after being forced out of the military for openly pushing to raise servicemen's pay. Da Silva's own convictions for corruption and money laundering led to 19 months imprisonment, sidelining him from the 2018 presidential race that polls indicated he had been leading against Bolsonaro. While voting earlier Sunday, Marley Melo, a 53-year-old trader in Brasilia, sported the yellow of the Brazilian flag, which Bolsonaro and his supporters have coopted for demonstrations. Bolsonaro grew up in a lower-middle-class family before joining the army. “But certain changes can be for the worse.” “I wouldn't believe,: she said. Israel's former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed gratitude for stronger bilateral relations and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban also praised him. The last Datafolha survey published Saturday had found a 50% to 36% advantage for da Silva. A slow economic recovery has yet to reach the poor, with 33 million Brazilians going hungry despite higher welfare payments. Nine other candidates were also competing, but their support pales to that for Bolsonaro and da Silva, who is commonly known as Lula. He said as recently as Sept.

Brazil's high-stakes presidential vote on Sunday a first-round winner with the necessary majority for an outright win, setting up a tense two-man race later ...

One expert says many surveys overrepresented poor voters, and far-right supporters may just not respond. Jair Bolsonaro speaks to supporters after learning ...

The first round of Brazil's presidential election has come and gone with no final victor, but some big losers have emerged: opinion pollsters.

Following a trend in recent years of underestimating voter support for Brexit and Donald Trump, opinion polls in Brazil were way off the mark for Sunday's ...