Brazil votes in knife-edge runoff between Lula and Bolsonaro
Nearly 160 million Brazilians choose between a fourth Lula term and Flavio Bolsonaro, with final polls deadlocked at 50-50 and results due Sunday night.
Rio de Janeiro — Nearly 160 million Brazilians vote on Sunday in the tightest presidential runoff in the country's recent history, choosing between a fourth term for President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, 80, and a return to the right under Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, 45, son of the jailed former president. The final Datafolha poll gives each man 50% of valid votes, MercoPress reported.
Bolsonaro won the first round on October 4 with 47.03% to Lula's 45.16%, a result that confounded pollsters; since Brazil restored direct presidential elections in 1989, no candidate who finished second in the first round has gone on to win. Both campaigns have spent the final weeks chasing the roughly 33 million voters who stayed home, closing with mass rallies and a calmer final televised debate in which, according to MercoPress, Bolsonaro twice apologised to Lula.
The economic stakes are sharp. Lula has leaned on incumbency, raising Bolsa Familia payments by 15%, cutting fuel taxes, pardoning the government debts of 3.6 million small businesses and securing Senate approval of a cut in the maximum working week from 44 to 40 hours with no salary reduction, France 24 reported. Bolsonaro promises the opposite mix: lower public spending while keeping social programmes, plus a hard line on crime including El Salvador-style megaprisons and trying defendants as young as 16 as adults.
His father's shadow hangs over the bid. Jair Bolsonaro is serving a 27-year sentence under house detention for plotting a coup after losing the 2022 election, and his son has vowed that his first act in office would be to free him. Lula, whose approval ratings fell as low as 24% this term amid anger over crime and the cost of living, has pitched himself as a bulwark against democratic backsliding and US interference. The vote will show whether Brazil stays one of Latin America's few leftist governments or joins a regional swing right championed by President Donald Trump, who has not openly endorsed his ally's son, The Hindu reported.
Whoever wins faces a Congress where Bolsonaro's Liberal Party holds its largest-ever bloc in the Chamber of Deputies, complicating any spending or security agenda. Both camps have also fought Meta over what they call unequal treatment on its platforms, and both candidates agreed days before the vote to open their bank and phone records.
Polls open at 8 a.m. and close at 5 p.m. Brasilia time, and Brazil's electronic voting system means results should be known on Sunday night. Gubernatorial runoffs in six states are decided the same day. The next test comes within hours: a count so close that either camp's reaction to defeat could matter as much as the result itself.
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