Brazil Election Live Results:
- Lula at 50.82%, Bolsonaro at 49.18%
- Results are based on a total of 117,305,567 valid votes
Former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva won a closed election in Brazil on Sunday, denying current President Jair Bolsonaro a second term in Latin America’s largest economy.
According to Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court, Lula got nearly 50.8% of the votes (59.723 million), and Bolsonaro 49.2% (57.751 million), with 98.96 of votes section accounted for.
Lula took his first lead in the runoff with more than 71% of the votes computed. On the first round, the former president surpassed Bolsonaro with 68% of the votes tallied. This means Bolsonaro’s performance has improved in the second round.
Lula’s victory was expected. He received 57.2 million votes in the first round (48.43%). Since 1989, none of the most-voted candidates in the first round had lost in a runoff. The favorable position of the former president had been reported by the electoral opinion polls since the day after the first round.
With the result, Bolsonaro becomes the first Brazilian president who has not been reelected since 1997, when the Constitution authorized reelection for executive positions.
According to Bloomberg News: “Today’s count is going much faster than the first round. Just for the sake of comparison: on Oct. 2, 40 minutes after polls closed we were at 1% of votes counted. Today, at the same time, we are at more than 10% already.”
According to media reports, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will join his team in a hotel in Sao Paulo where he will deliver a speech later in the evening. In turn, Jair Bolsonaro is following the results from the official residence in Brasilia.
Brazilians went to the polls to choose who will be their next president: the leftist candidate, Luiz Lula Da Silva, or the current president Jair Bolsonaro.
According to analysts’ projections, the outcome may not offer a wide margin of difference, similar to what happened in the first round, which took place on Sunday, October 2: Lula led with 48.43% of the vote and Bolsanaro obtained 43.2%.
This Sunday, more than 156 million voters are choosing between two very different visions for their country.
Read more on the Brazilian Elections:
Lula, 77, ruled Brazil between 2003 and 2011, has drawn on memories of past prosperity, and promoted his previous experience in office as a means to heal the nation’s deep divisions and end hunger.
Bolsonaro, 67, a self-proclaimed God-fearing former army captain whose style is often compared to that of Donald Trump, enjoys strong support from Brazil’s powerful agribusiness sector and the evangelical community. He promises to bring Christian values to the highest echelons of power and cut red tape to stimulate growth.
-- With information from Bloomberg News
--News in development