Brazil Heads to Presidential Runoff After First Round Fails to Produce a Winner

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2026 — Brazil’s presidential election is heading to a runoff after a surprise first-round victory for right-wing Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, who will face leftist incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva after neither secured more than 50% of the vote on Sunday, the threshold required to win outright. With 98.81% of votes counted, Bolsonaro secured about 47.2% of valid votes to Lula’s 44.9%, according to data from Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court reported by IANS — a stunning first-place finish for the 45-year-old senator and son of imprisoned former president Jair Bolsonaro.

It is important to be precise about who won the first round: this is Flávio Bolsonaro, the Liberal Party senator from Rio de Janeiro and the eldest son of Jair Bolsonaro — not Jair Bolsonaro himself. The former president was convicted by the Supreme Federal Court, barred from running for office before 2030, and arrested in 2025. He is serving a 27-year prison sentence after being convicted of masterminding a failed attempt to overturn the previous election result through a military coup, IANS reported. He endorsed his eldest son for the presidency.

The surprisePolls had it backwards

Flávio Bolsonaro finished ahead of Lula with 47% of the vote despite polls just days earlier forecasting he would come in second, CNN reported. Lula came in second with 44.9% of votes, according to the Superior Electoral Court. The final result represents approximately 56.1 million votes for Bolsonaro to about 53.8 million for Lula, per vote totals reported by Eurasia Business News.

Both leading candidates beat out a field of 12 candidates in a general election that also chose governors, legislators and senators. Around 160 million registered voters were eligible, and Brazil’s electronic voting system delivered the count rapidly after polls closed. Voting is compulsory for most adults in the world’s fifth-largest country, and turnout is typically among the highest in the Americas, CNN noted.

The runoffOctober 25, with the world watching

The two leading candidates will now advance to the second round of voting on October 25, after beating out the rest of the field. The next presidential term is scheduled to begin on January 5, 2027, ANI reported.

Flávio Bolsonaro said he sees his first-place finish as “the end of the PT era,” a reference to Lula’s Workers’ Party, CNN reported — adding that he “can’t wait to regain democracy in three weeks.” Speaking to supporters in Brasília, he repeated one of his campaign’s central proposals: ending presidential reelections. “I only need one term.”

Lula, 80, who is seeking a fourth non-consecutive term after serving from 2003 to 2010, told supporters at a hotel in São Paulo late Sunday that he hadn’t expected the result. “I confess I was convinced I would win the election in the first round,” CNN quoted him as saying. “Starting tomorrow, we begin a new campaign.”

The consolidationRight-wing rivals line up behind Flávio

Senator Flávio Bolsonaro received endorsements on Monday from Ronaldo Caiado and Romeu Zema, two right-wing politicians who ran against him in Sunday’s first-round vote, Reuters reported. Caiado, a former governor of Goiás state, won 2.18% of valid votes — which exclude blank and null ballots — on Sunday, while Zema, an ex-governor of Minas Gerais state, got 0.27%. Caiado, from the PSD party, will meet with Bolsonaro on Tuesday to announce the endorsement; Zema, from the NOVO party, unveiled his endorsement in a social media post.

Among other candidates, author-psychiatrist Augusto Cury and Renan Santos, who received 2.89% and 2.24% of the vote respectively, said they would not endorse Bolsonaro or Lula, Reuters reported. The two-point gap is narrow, but the first-round result has shifted political momentum toward the Bolsonaro camp, and the outcome could favor Bolsonaro further as several other eliminated candidates came from the right-wing political camp — their voters may now consolidate behind him. A victory for the senator would extend a wave of wins across Latin America by right-wing candidates aligned with US President Donald Trump, while Lula’s re-election could complicate Washington, which has clashed with his government over trade and security.

The campaign played out against a backdrop of corruption scandals, deep political polarization and growing voter fatigue, CNN reported — and offered meager policy debate, as both leading candidates skipped the major TV debates. For continuing context on how this race has shaped Washington relations, see our earlier coverage — and read Sunday’s first-round preview to see how the polls compared.

The road aheadThree weeks to decide

The runoff campaign begins immediately, and the calendar is already filling. Caiado is set to meet with Flávio Bolsonaro on Tuesday to formally announce his endorsement, his press team said, per Reuters. Before Sunday’s vote, Flávio had told journalists in Rio de Janeiro that he was counting on a “protest vote” from voters opposed to Lula — people who, in earlier cycles, might have backed another candidate — and said he hoped it would be enough to win the presidency in the first round, per the HK Businesswire/Reuters wire. Analysts cited by that same wire believed much of his surprise showing came from exactly that: voters casting ballots against Lula rather than for the right-wing senator — votes they had been expected to save for a second round.

For Lula, the arithmetic is unforgiving. The president will now try to consolidate his base — historically anchored in Brazil’s northeast and among lower-income voters — while reaching out to the supporters of eliminated candidates, per the IANS analysis. He received almost four million fewer votes than he did in the first round four years earlier, a sign, the Eurasia Business News assessment argued, that voter fatigue, crime concerns and disappointment with the pace of economic improvement may have weakened his coalition. Either way, the next three weeks decide who leads Latin America’s largest economy — and whether the Trump-aligned rightward wave sweeping the region reaches Brasília’s presidential palace.