Flávio Bolsonaro Wins the First Round in Brazil
Flávio Bolsonaro took 47% of the vote to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s 45.1% with 99.9% counted, forcing a run-off on 25 October. Every major poll had put Lula first. The right also took 34 of the 54 Senate seats decided, and the Liberal Party is on course to be the largest force in the lower house. “I admit, I was convinced I would win in the first round,” Lula said.
The margin is two points, 56.1 million votes to 53.8 million, from an electorate of nearly 159 million who also chose 27 governors, 513 deputies and 54 of the 81 senators. The Senate result is the one the Bolsonaro family wanted most, because senators are the only lawmakers who can impeach supreme court justices, and Jair Bolsonaro is serving 27 years for plotting a coup after losing in 2022. His son has promised him an amnesty, and the same for those who stormed the capital on 8 January 2023. The dynasty did well in its own right: Michelle Bolsonaro won a Senate seat in the Federal District, her first elected office; Carlos Bolsonaro took one in Santa Catarina; Jair Renan Bolsonaro won a seat in the lower house; and Tarcísio de Freitas was re-elected governor of São Paulo. The analyst Rafael Favetti argued the upset cuts both ways: “The protest vote foreshadows what is to come in the run-off. While this should benefit Flavio Bolsonaro now, his growth potential in the second round drops precisely because that support has already been front-loaded.” Mr Bolsonaro called it “the end of an era” for the Workers’ Party; Lula said the country had just had “a lesson in Brazilian democracy” and that “in extra time, we will win”. Watch the 4.3% that went to the two also-rans, both of whom say they will endorse nobody.