Brazil will go to the second presidential round on October 30, after the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro obtained this Sunday in the first round a surprising performance against the leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who won by a narrow margin.
(Read here: Brazil votes today under a climate of polarization and the specter of violence)
At the end of an agonizing count that began giving Bolsonaro an advantage of up to seven points but which was later reduced by drops, the results placed former President Lula with 48.19% of the votes, compared to 43.40% for the president. , with 98.99% of polling stations counted.
(See also: Lula da Silva and Bolsonaro face each other this Sunday at the polls)
The main pollsters had predicted a wide advantage for Lula for months and had even foreseen the possibility that the former president would win this Sunday without the need for a ballot on October 30.
However, Bolsonaro resisted and achieved a result that only his supporters insisted on believing.
Meanwhile, Lula, who had even reserved the emblematic Paulista avenue to celebrate his victory in style in Sao Paulo, will now have to fight for every vote.
“Today’s results will force Lula to court centrist and even conservative voters more aggressively in the next four weeks,” Oliver Stuenkel, a professor of international relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV) in Sao Paulo, said in a tweet. Paul.
The day began at 8 am (local time) and closed at 5 pm (local time, 3 pm Bogotá. In total, some 156.4 million voters were summoned to elect the president, the 27 governors, the 513 deputies, a third of the Senate and renew the representatives in the regional legislative assemblies.
the two candidates
Bolsonaro, a 67-year-old former army captain, has focused his campaign strategy on moral values (“God, country, family”), a patriotic speech and attacks on his adversary, whom he refers to as the “thief” and “ex-convict”.
He maintains solid support among evangelicals, who represent a third of the electorate, agribusiness and popular sectors that do not forgive Lula’s Workers’ Party for its corruption scandals.
The far-right had attacked the polls at his rallies: he assured that the electoral temperature had to be taken in the streets, and that in that case he would win by far. Two weeks ago he said it would be “abnormal” not to win by 60% in the first round.
His mandate was marked by a turbulent management of the pandemic that left 686,000 dead, an increase in poverty and hunger, record levels of deforestation in the Amazon, and attacks against judicial institutions and the press.
For his part, Lula, 76, was counting on reaching a third presidency in the first round, supported by the popular classes, women and young people, after having governed Brazil between 2003-2010 and having left power with an enviable rate of popularity.
But Lula has not been able to shake off the stain of corruption in the eyes of a good part of society. He was sentenced and later had his convictions overturned on procedural grounds in the “Car Wash” scandal involving a bribery ring at state oil company Petrobras.
In the center of Rio, Viviane Laureano da Silva, a 36-year-old civil servant, was confident that Lula “will win in a second shift. The campaign is going to be difficult. I am from the periphery and I see how the people support Lula “, he told AFP after learning the results.
If he wins in the second round, Lula promises to fight hunger in Brazil, remove the country from its diplomatic isolation and put an end to its image as an environmental “pariah” due to the massive deforestation of the Amazon recorded under Bolsonaro.
The details of the day of the presidential elections in Brazil
After nine hours of election day in Brazil, all polling stations closed this Sunday.
The authorities previously reported that the day had passed normally, although there were some isolated acts of irregularities.
Electoral Justice Bulletin
According to the most recent bulletin of the Electoral Justice, released at 11:40 a.m. local time (2:40 p.m. GMT), during the almost first four hours of voting, 1,374 electronic ballot boxes had to be replaced due to various errors, which barely represent 0.29% of the total. that has been installed throughout the country (472,075)
balance at noon
The presidential, legislative and regional elections in
Brazil passes this Sunday normally in its first hours, with few registered cases of problems in the electronic ballot boxes and electoral crimes, the authorities reported.
Bolsonaro speaks
The president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, said this Sunday that “clean elections must be respected” when voting in Rio de Janeiro in the first round of the presidential elections, and wished that “the best win.”
The current president and candidate, who is second in the polls, has questioned the reliability of Brazil’s electoral system, raising fears that he will not accept an eventual defeat against former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The former president and candidate for the elections in Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva voted this Sunday and said he wants to win so that Brazil “returns to normality”.
I am “voting here with the possibility of becoming president again, to try to get this country back to normal.”
“We don’t want any more hate or discord,” the leader of the left said when voting in Sao Bernardo do Campo, in the Sao Paulo metropolitan region.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With AFP and Efe
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