Brazil presidential election is headed for a runoff on October 30 as incumbent Jair Bolsonaro beat expectations to finish a closer-than-expected second to front-runner Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. The second round of campaign kicked off Monday after right-wing President Bolsonaro robbed leftist former President Silva of an outright victory in the first round of voting.
With 99.9 per cent of electronic votes counted, Lula had taken 48.4 per cent of votes versus 43.2 per cent for Bolsonaro. As neither got a majority of support, the race goes to a runoff vote on October 30.
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The race has proven tighter than most surveys suggested, revitalizing Bolsonaro’s campaign after he insisted that polls could not be trusted. If Bolsonaro manages to stage a comeback, it would break with a wave of victories for leftists across the region in recent years, including Mexico, Colombia, Argentina and Chile.
Bolsonaro has made baseless attacks on the integrity of Brazil’s electronic voting system and suggested he may not concede if he loses. On Sunday night, he sounded confident victory was within reach.
“I plan to make the right political alliances to win this election,” he told journalists, pointing to significant advances his party made in Congress in the general election.
Bolsonaro’s right-wing allies won 19 of the 27 seats up in the Senate, and initial returns suggested a strong showing for his base in the lower house.
Bolsonaro’s strong showing led bankers and analysts to expect a boost for Brazilian financial markets on Monday.
Lula tried to make it all sound good by saying he was looking forward to another month on the campaign trail and the chance to debate Bolsonaro head-to-head.
However, there was clear frustration inside his campaign that he had fallen short of the narrow majority forecast in some polls. He also saw weak results in state races outside of his party’s traditional northeastern stronghold.
“There was a clear movement of votes in the southeast, beyond what the surveys and even the campaign managed to detect,” a campaign source told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
Support for distant third- and fourth-place finishers also fell short of recent surveys, suggesting some of their backers may have shifted to Bolsonaro when it came time to vote.
(With inputs from agencies)
