
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won Sunday’s presidential runoff with 51.78% of valid votes against 48.22% for Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, according to the Superior Electoral Court, with 99.97% of the vote counted. Lula, 80, will govern the country for a fourth time, from 2027 to 2030, after overturning his first-round deficit.

Senator Flávio Bolsonaro announced on Sunday night that he does not recognise President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s victory in Brazil’s presidential runoff and will seek to have it annulled, arguing that the extension of voting hours ordered by a Supreme Federal Court judge was irregular. Lula won with 51.78% of valid votes against 48.22%, a margin of some 4.4 million votes.

Senator Flávio Bolsonaro apologised twice to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva during the last televised debate before Sunday’s runoff in Brazil, held on Friday night on TV Globo, which was more measured in tone than the first. The candidates arrived level: the latest Datafolha poll, published on Thursday, gives each 50% of valid votes.

Two days before Brazil’s presidential runoff, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Senator Flávio Bolsonaro are focusing their final efforts on the same target: the roughly 33 million voters who stayed away in the first round. With polls showing a statistical tie and just 1% or 2% undecided, mobilising those who stayed at home on October 4 could decide the outcome.

US Senator Bernie Sanders and 11 other Democratic lawmakers on Thursday asked Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg to explain the alleged unequal treatment by Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp of the campaigns of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, who face each other on Sunday in Brazil’s presidential runoff.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva led a large rally on São Paulo’s Avenida Paulista on Sunday to relaunch his campaign two weeks before the October 25 runoff, in which he trails Senator Flávio Bolsonaro. “This country cannot lose its democracy,” he told a largely young crowd.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has set education, research and industrial policy as the pillars of his campaign for the October 25 runoff, and urged the more than 30 million Brazilians who abstained on Sunday to vote, after finishing behind Senator Flávio Bolsonaro in the first round.

Brazil holds the first round of its presidential election on Sunday, with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Senator Flávio Bolsonaro tied in a prospective runoff and a narrow band of undecided voters, along with abstention, able to tip the result.

A remark by Brazilian President and re-election candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva about men's reluctance to undergo prostate examinations has sparked a controversy in the final stretch of the campaign, after opposition figures linked it to child sexual abuse. Lula's campaign has taken the matter to the Superior Electoral Court.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has widened his lead over Senator Flávio Bolsonaro to five points in voting intentions for Sunday's first round, according to a Quaest poll released on Monday, though the two remain tied in a prospective October 25 runoff.