Bolsonaro’s first-round lead leaves Brazil presidential contest undecided

Flávio Bolsonaro has outpaced incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil’s first-round presidential vote, according to Al Jazeera, but neither candidate secured the 50 per cent needed to win outright. They are due to face each other in a run-off on 25 October.

Bolsonaro received 47 per cent and Lula 45.1 per cent, defying pre-election polls that had projected an advantage of about three percentage points for the incumbent. The contest comes four years after Lula defeated Bolsonaro’s father, former president Jair Bolsonaro.

Oliver Stuenkel, a professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, told Al Jazeera that voters for other first-round candidates were unlikely to shift to Lula because those candidates were largely centre-right. He said Lula would need to mobilise some of the roughly 30 million people who did not vote in the first round.

Al Jazeera analyst Stuenkel forecast that Flávio Bolsonaro would win, while acknowledging that an unusual event could change the course of the contest. The forecast is not a decided result.

The broader general election also strengthened the Bolsonaro family’s congressional presence. Michelle Bolsonaro won a Senate seat in the Federal District, Carlos Bolsonaro won a Senate seat in Santa Catarina, and Jair Renan Bolsonaro was elected to the lower house.

The Liberal Party won 121 of the Chamber of Deputies’ 513 seats, compared with 70 for Lula’s Workers’ Party. Flávio Bolsonaro has pledged to seek congressional amnesty for his imprisoned father if elected; the proposal would require approval from both houses.