Polling stations close in Brazil’s presidential election — BBC News

Polling stations in Brazil have closed after voting in the first round of the presidential election. Incumbent left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is competing against right-wing candidate Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of Jair Bolsonaro. According to BBC News, the gap between the two leading candidates in the BBC Brazil poll aggregator is two percentage points.

A possible second round

Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court said that more than 158.7 million citizens are eligible to vote, including around one million voters abroad. Lula has 11 rivals, including Bolsonaro. According to the BBC Brazil poll aggregator, candidates other than Lula and Bolsonaro could jointly receive around 10% of the vote.

If no candidate wins more than 50% of the vote, a second round will take place on October 25. The Superior Electoral Court has not set an exact time for releasing the official results, but the data are expected within several hours, as electronic voting is used in the country and previous elections showed results arriving quickly.

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Votes of electors abroad

After voting, Lula said that the choice in this election is between democracy and “barbarism.” Bolsonaro, for his part, said that he wants to “liberate the Brazilian people.”

In some countries, preliminary results of voting by Brazilians abroad have already been released. In China, Lula received 56.63% of the vote, while Bolsonaro received 31.33%. Lula also won in South Korea, New Zealand and Saudi Arabia. In Israel, Bolsonaro won 74.40% of valid votes, and in Japan, 71.59%.

At the same time, the election will determine the composition of the Senate from February 2027: 54 of the 81 seats in the upper house of parliament are up for grabs. Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party currently has the largest bloc in the Senate.