Updated October 5, 2026 at 10:37 AM AKDT
RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil's presidential race is heading to a runoff between left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and right-wing Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro after neither candidate secured the more than 50% of valid votes needed to win outright.
The race was tight, with Bolsonaro finishing ahead of Lula in Sunday's first-round election. With more than 99% of the vote counted, Bolsonaro secured roughly 47% of the vote, while Lula came in second place with 45%.
If that sounds like déjà vu, it's because in many ways, this election is a rerun: Lula narrowly defeated Bolsonaro's father, former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro, in 2022. Jair Bolsonaro is now serving a 27-year prison sentence under house arrest after being convicted of plotting to overturn that election and prevent Lula from taking office.
Flávio Bolsonaro has pledged to carry on his father's legacy. Speaking to journalists and supporters outside his home in Brasília after the results came in, he said the vote showed Brazilians were ready for a political change.
"Brazil wants change, that's the reading of what happened today," Bolsonaro said. "It's the end of the Workers' Party era," he added, referring to Lula's political party.
Sunday's results also pointed to a broader rightward shift in Brazilian politics, with the Bolsonaro camp performing strongly across the country.
Lula sought to rally his supporters in São Paulo, framing the next stage of the campaign as a fresh contest.
"Tomorrow we start a new campaign," Lula said. "I am very good in the knockout stage. We will see who has the best plan."
Lula also took aim at his opponent, warning voters about Bolsonaro's political background. "On the other side we have an uncertainty with a biography of a dark past," he said.
The presidential candidates who came in third, fourth, and fifth place are all right-wing, suggesting that Bolsonaro could have a natural pool of voters to draw from in the runoff. That could set the stage for another extremely tight contest on Oct. 25.
Brazilians also chose governors and state and federal lawmakers Sunday, with early results showing that the right also made significant gains in Congress, particularly in the Senate. That could give Bolsonaro a stronger political base if he wins the presidency.
Lula, 80, is aiming for his fourth nonconsecutive term and has pledged to continue broad social spending and to stand up to Trump's aggressive policies toward Latin America.
Bolsonaro, 45, pledges to slash the deficit and realign the country's foreign policy with Washington. The result suggests Lula will now have to do more than defend his record: he will need to rebuild the broad coalition that returned him to power in 2022, including among younger voters who have shown less enthusiasm for his campaign.
This year's presidential campaign featured smaller rallies compared to past years, perhaps because both of the candidates felt like known quantities to voters.
"I think the campaign feels more muted because people are tired of fighting," said 38-year-old nutritionist Raysa Tavares after she voted Sunday afternoon in the Rio de Janeiro favela of Vidigal.
Businessman Caio Farias, 37, who voted in Rio's upscale neighborhood of Leblon, said that he preferred other right-wing candidates to Bolsonaro, but voted for Bolsonaro in an effort to try to get the election over in one round.
Now, Brazilians are gearing up for another three weeks of campaigning. In the 2022 election, the second round of the election saw a sharp uptick in political violence, with dozens of people physically attacking each other for political reasons, Brazilian news site Pública reported.
Beyond the fact that this year's contest features a younger Bolsonaro, there's something else setting it apart from the last one: Trump is in the White House, with big ambitions for drawing politics in Latin America to the right. Lula has accused the United States of trying to meddle in Brazil's election, which the U.S. State Department has denied.
Bolsonaro rallies have featured American flags and a giant inflatable doll of Trump holding a jailed Lula, while Lula has campaigned on the idea of protecting Brazilian sovereignty from foreign interference—a rarely-heard watchword in 2022. In Rio on election day, voters could be seen on the streets both with Trump T-shirts and "out with Trump" stickers.
The topic of Brazil's relationship with the United States is sure to feature in second-round campaigning, as are domestic themes of security policy, corruption, and the economy, which polls say are top of voters' minds.
But the first-round results have added another defining issue to the runoff: whether Brazil wants to continue with Lula or embrace the broader rightward shift that emerged from Sunday's vote.
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