Senator Flávio Bolsonaro won the first round of Brazil’s presidential election on Sunday, taking 47.03 percent of the valid vote — 56.1 million ballots — to incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s 45.16 percent, or 53.9 million, according to the Superior Electoral Court. With neither candidate clearing 50 percent, they meet again in a runoff on October 25.
The result was a genuine polling failure: most pre-election surveys had shown Lula ahead by a single-digit margin, with Datafolha’s final poll at 42-40 and late surveys pointing to a Lula lead. Instead Bolsonaro swept the three largest states — São Paulo 52 to 38, Rio de Janeiro 53 to 39, Minas Gerais 48 to 43 — and the three candidates who finished third, fourth and fifth were all right-wing, giving him a natural runoff voter pool.
The congressional results compounded the rightward shift: early tallies showed significant right-wing gains in Congress, particularly in the Senate, where Bolsonaro’s wife Michelle was elected. An 80-year-old Lula seeking a fourth nonconsecutive term now campaigns as the underdog against a 45-year-old challenger who has pledged to carry on his father’s legacy — the former president, barred from running, remains under house arrest serving a 27-year sentence for plotting to overturn the 2022 result.
The economic stakes are immediate. Lula has promised a debt ceiling if reelected; the U.S. tariff architecture on Brazil — a 10 percent baseline with a 50 percent effective rate on many goods and a 10 percent steel deal — hangs on the winner; and the regulatory posture over Brazil’s mineral assets, from Lynas’s Caldeira rare-earth deposit to iron ore and agriculture exports, will be set by whoever takes office. Copom has eased the Selic to 13.75 percent into this election — the runoff result will reprice that path.