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The Guardian - UK
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Helen Sullivan

Brazil’s Lula headed for run-off with Bolsonaro – as it happened

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva Brazil Bolsonaro
Former president of Brazil and Worker's Party candidate in the 2022 Brazilian elections Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva speaks in Sao Paulo, Brazil, as counting draws to a close on 2 October 2022.
Former president of Brazil and Worker's Party candidate in the 2022 Brazilian elections Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva speaks in Sao Paulo, Brazil, as counting draws to a close on 2 October 2022. Photograph: Alexandre Schneider/Getty Images

That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan – thanks for following along. We’ll be closing this blog shortly, but you can catch up on the latest with our story here:

Strength to all the jornalistas on the Brazil beat, it’s going to be an intense 28 days:

The Minas Gerais bellwether works. We reported earlier that the huge Brazilian state has correctly picked the winner of every national election since 1989.

Tonight’s results, from journalist Bruno Fonseca: “Election for president in Brazil in the first image. In Minas on Monday. Practically the same distribution.”

A more optimistic take on tonight’s results, from Dawisson Belém Lopes, professor of international politics at Brazil’s Minas Gerais Federal University:

“5 percentage points. 6 million votes… The good news: there is no “margin of error”. It is not speculated advantage; it is real advantage.”

Bolsonaro became president at the start of 2019 and has slashed environmental protections and promoted colonisation of the forest. research shows that CO2 emissions doubled in 2019 and 2020 compared with the average over the previous decade, driven by soaring deforestation and fires as law enforcement collapsed.

The latest data shows that almost a million hectares of rainforest have been burned in the past year. In the month to 26 September, fires soared to their highest levels in a decade. Brazil’s national space research agency, INPE, reported 36,850 fire alerts in the region, more than double than in the whole month in 2021.

The increase may have been because of those illegally destroying the forest taking a final opportunity to grab land before the election, according to Amazon researchers.

Read more:

Brazil’s election authority has declared that Lula has won 14 states and the overseas vote in the first round, with Bolsonaro winning 14 states.

As you can see from the below map – and out tracker here – the results are roughly split according to geography, with the country’s poorer north favouring Lula.

The fate of the Amazon rests on the final result of Brazil’s national election, according to experts, who say a continuation of the rampant destruction under President Jair Bolsonaro could push the world’s biggest rainforest past an irreversible tipping point.

In contrast, a victory for the former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who oversaw a sharp decline in deforestation when in power, could lead to the razing of forests falling by 90%, scientists estimate.

The Amazon rainforest plays a vital role in the global climate as a vast store of carbon dioxide, but recent research showed that fires and tree felling have left the region emitting more CO2 than it absorbs. Researchers showed in March that the Amazon was approaching a tipping point, after which the forest would be lost, with profound implications for the global climate and biodiversity.

In case you’re just joining us:

Brazil’s acrimonious presidential race will go to a second round after the former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva failed to secure the overall majority he needed to avoid a run-off with the far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro.

With more than 99.5% of votes counted the leftist veteran had secured 48.3% of the vote, not enough to avoid the 30 October show down with his right-wing rival. Bolsonaro, who significantly out-performed pollsters’s predictions and will be buoyed by the result, received 43.3%.

Addressing the media at a hotel in downtown São Paulo, Lula, who was president from 2003 until 2010, struck a defiant tone, declaring: “The struggle continues until our final victory.”

“We are going to win these elections – this for us is simply extra time,” vowed Lula, who was barred from the 2018 election that saw Bolsonaro elected, on corruption charges that were later over-turned.

With final results for the first round within spitting distance, Lula maintains his 5% – or 6 million vote – lead over Bolsonaro:

As we reported earlier, 30 million Brazilians didn’t vote in this round.

Bolsonaro appeals to poor Brazilians in response to result

Andrew Downie reports for the Guardian that Jair Bolsonaro, speaking to the media in Brasilia, has promised to devote more time into convincing the poorest sectors of society they will be better off under a far-right government than a leftist one.

With four weeks until the run-off election on 30 October, Bolsonaro said, “I understand there were a lot of votes (cast) because of the condition of the Brazilian people, who feel prices increases, especially basic products. I understand that a lot of people desire change but some changes can be for the worst.”

“We tried to show this other side in the campaign but it seems like it didn’t register with the most important layers of society.”

Brazilian President and re-election candidate Jair Bolsonaro speaks to supporters after learning the results of the legislative and presidential election in Brasilia, on 2 October 2022.
Brazilian President and re-election candidate Jair Bolsonaro speaks to supporters after learning the results of the legislative and presidential election in Brasilia, on 2 October 2022. Photograph: Evaristo Sa/AFP/Getty Images

In a reference to his pandemic policy of keeping business open as much as possible, the anti-masker added, “We are now going to show the Brazilian people, especially those most affected, that it was a consequence of the policy of ‘stay at home, we’ll worry about the economy later,’ of a foreign war, and an ideological crisis as well.”

He once again said Brazil must avoid following neighbouring nations such as Chile and Colombia who recently elected leftist leaders but he pointedly refused to answer questions about possible voter fraud, after spending months casting aspersions on the security of the electronic voting machines.

Bolsonaro has hinted he will not leave office if defeated, raising concerns of a Trump-like insurrection among his supporters if Lula wins.

Brazilian sociologist Nara Roberta Silva has shared her take on tonight’s surprising results, which supports Jill Langlois’s reporting earlier, that centrist voters who had been expected to vote for neither Lula or Bolsonaro switched to Bolsonaro at the last minute. “The extreme right is here to stay,” she said.

Lula wants just one thing for his birthday –he doesn’t mind if it is a few days late:

“I have a birthday on the 27th, and the elections are on the 30th. This will be my gift. The next few days will be for us to improve more, talk to more people,” he tweeted.

Lula is getting fired up for the next four weeks, tweeting in Portuguese, “I love campaigning. And we have 28 more days. I love doing rallies, getting on a truck. And it will be the first opportunity to have a face-to-face debate with the current president. So that we can make comparisons between the Brazil he built and the Brazil we built.”

Mexican President Andrés Manuel has congratulated Lula – he does not seem to be aware that there will be another round of voting.

Tweeting in Spanish, Manuel wrote, “Congratulations, brother and companion Lula. The people of Brazil demonstrated once again their democratic vocation and, especially, their inclination for equality and justice.”

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has congratulated Brazil on a “successful first round election”, and said that the US trusts the next round will go as smoothly:

Journalist Jill Langlois has pointed out that voters who were expected to back Ciro Gomes and Simone Tebet switched their support to Bolsonaro at the last minute.

Ciro Gomes is a a former Lula minister who is now his main leftwing rival. In 2021, he called a third Lula presidency an “awful” prospect.

Gomes claimed voter fury over “the economic and moral debacle” of past PT governments – when key Lula associates, including his chief of staff and finance minister were jailed for corruption – had paved the way for Bolsonaro’s election. He argued Lula’s involvement in the 2022 vote threaten returning Bolsonaro to office by creating an election “in which Bolsonaro calls Lula a crook, and Lula calls Bolsonaro a murderer”.

Tebet, the candidate for the Brazilian Democratic Movement (PMDB), opposed both Bolsonaro and Lula in the election, running as a centrist.

Writing in the Guardian in 2015, Jonathan Watts described the PMDB like so:

With no overarching ideology, the party has often resembled a vipers nest of deeply divided factions, ranging from conservative rural landowners and urban social democrats to evangelical nationalists and former guerrillas whose only common ground is a desire to secure the patronage, prestige and – very often – bribes that come with government posts.

Updated

The Guardian’s Tom Phillips with a young Lula supporter:

One in five Brazilians – which in the world’s fourth-largest democracy is 30 million people – did not vote in the elections. Hopefully more turn out for the run-offs at the end of this month:

Questions about tonight’s result? Let me know @helenrsullivan and we’ll do our best to answer them.

Oliver Stuenkel, a professor of international relations at Rio’s FGV School of International Relations has spelled out how Bolsonaro could win the run-off elections at the end of this month.

Updated

More from Lula in São Paulo:

“It’s like destiny likes me having to work a bit more,” he says.

“We are going to win these elections!…I am absolutely certain that divine justice will allow us to win these elections to recover the dignity of the Brazilian people.”

Updated

Juts over 99.5% of the vote has now been counted.

Lula has more than 48%, and Bolsonaro more than 43%.

Lula: 'We are going to win these elections – this for us is simply extra time'

Lula has addressed the media and supporters at a hotel in downtown São Paulo.

He struck a defiant tone, declaring: “The struggle continues until our final victory.”

“We are going to win these elections – this for us is simply extra time,” vowed Lula, who was barred from the 2018 election that saw Bolsonaro elected, on corruption charges that were later over-turned.

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva speaks to supporters in downtown São Paulo on 2 October 2022.
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva speaks to supporters in downtown São Paulo on 2 October 2022. Photograph: Marcelo Chello/AP

Speaking on the eve of the election Lula said he was hopeful of a first round win but would redouble his efforts to reclaim power if a second round was needed.

“I feel great hope that this election will be decided tomorrow, but if it isn’t we’ll have to behave like a football team when a match goes to extra time. We’ll rest for 15 minutes and then we’ll get back out onto the pitch to score the goals we didn’t score in normal time,” he told reporters.

Updated

From Andrew Downie in São Paulo:

Prominent Bolsonaristas were elected to Brazil’s congress and as state governors, including Bolsonaro’s former health minister, Eduardo Pazzuelo, who became a congressman for Rio, and his former environment minister Ricardo Salles.

Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro, left, listens to his Environment Minister Ricardo Salles before the start of a news conference on deforestation on 1 August, 2019.
Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro, left, listens to his Environment Minister Ricardo Salles before the start of a news conference on deforestation on 1 August, 2019. Photograph: Eraldo Peres/AP

Pazzuelo was Bolsonaro’s Health Minister during the height of the pandemic that led to more than 685,000 deaths in Brazil. A former military general he promoted quack cures such as hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine. Salles, meanwhile, was the Environment Minister who presided over a sharp rise in Amazonian deforestation.

A Federal Police investigation accused the far-right ideologue of making it difficult for environmental crimes to be investigated. A separate inquiry said he was linked to illegal logging exports. He denied all the charges.

Brazil-based journalist Ana Ionova reports for the Guardian from Rio de Janeiro’s históric city center, where a massive crowd of people, mostly clad in red, drank beer and danced samba as they awaited the final tally to appear on a screen overlooking the square.

But the jubilant mood dampened when results showed Lula still nearly 2 percent shy of the majority he needed to avoid a runoff duel with Bolsonaro.

“I’m disappointed,” said Kharine Gil, a 23-year-old university student. “Because we saw that Bolsonaro is stronger than we thought he was.”

Her friend Larissa Santana, also a 23-year-old student, agreed. “I’m really worried. I never imagined we could go to a second round.”

Lula supporters react to results in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on 2 October 2022.
Lula supporters react to results in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on 2 October 2022. Photograph: Ricardo Moraes/Reuters

Elaine Azevedo, a 34-year-old security systems worker, looked defeated as she stared up at the towering screen showing the results.

“I feel despair, pure despair,” said Azevedo, who was clad in red from head to toe and sported a hat with Lula’s name on it. “We all thought Lula would win easily.”

But, at a neighborhood bar about a block away, Eudacio Queiroz Alves, a 65-year-old retired driver, was celebrating.

“We expected this,” he said. “The people are with Bolsonaro. I’m confident that he will win.”

Updated

Brazilians have also elected Célia Xakriabá as the first female indigenous federal deputy of Minas Gerais:

Xakriabá is among a powerful group of female indigenous leaders leading the fight against the destruction of Brazil’s forests both in the Amazon and the lesser known Cerrado, a savannah that covers a fifth of the country.

In more positive news, Erika Hilton has become the first trans person elected to the Brazilian parliament.

Andrew Downie profiled her in the story below. As he writes, Bolsonaro has long made clear his contempt for LGBT people, Afro-Brazilians and women, and Hilton is one of a new generation who stepped up to answer back.

Brazil is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be LGBT, with at least 310 killed last year, 114 of them trans, according to the rights organisation Grupo Gay de Bahia.

Updated

Hapmden-Sydney college professor Andre Pagliarini has shared what he thinks tonight’s results mean for Brazil.

The Guardian’s Tom Phillips is at Lola’s hotel in São Paulo, where Gleisi Hoffmann, the president of Lula’s Workers’ party, told reporters the campaign was neither “sad or downcast” at the result and pointed to Lula’s more than 56 million votes.

“Congratulations president Lula for your victory,” she declared.

A reminder of how Brazil’s electoral system works: Brazil’s president is elected directly by the 156 million voters; there is no electoral college and no role for the legislature. A candidate needs more than 50% of the vote to be elected. If this does not happen in the first round, the top two candidates will go into a runoff election at the end of the month.

UC Berkley sociology professor Daniel Cohen on Lula’s supporters:

While we’re waiting for Lula to speak in São Paulo, here are some pictures from the night:

A Lula supporter cries at the end of the general election day at Largo da Prainha on 2 October 2022 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
A Lula supporter cries at the end of the general election day at Largo da Prainha on 2 October 2022 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Photograph: Buda Mendes/Getty Images
A supporter of former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio
A supporter of former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva, listens to the partial results after polls close in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on 2 October 2022. Photograph: Silvia Izquierdo/AP
Supporterd of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who is running for another term, ride through Brasilia, Brazil, on 2 October 2022.
Supporterd of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who is running for another term, ride through Brasilia, Brazil, on 2 October 2022. Photograph: Ton Molina/AP

In case you’re just joining us: former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (known as Lula) of the leftist Workers’ Party got the most votes in Brazil’s presidential election Sunday, but not enough to avoid a runoff vote against his far-right rival, incumbent Jair Bolsonaro.

With more than 98% of the votes counted, Lula had 48% of the vote –short of the just over 50% needed to secure an outright victory.

Updated

Brazil’s electoral authority has confirmed that Brazilians will vote in run-off elections on 30 October.

From Reuters global climate correspondent Jake Spring:

From the Guardian’s Latin America correspondent, Tom Phillips:

Thiago Amparo, an academic and columnist for the Folha de São Paulo newspaper, said the right’s stronger-than-forecast showing showed Bolsonaro and Bolsonarismo were “alive and kicking”.

“There was a feeling among the left that Lula had a chance to win in the first round ... the results show that it was wishful thinking to imagine the election would serve as a way to punish Bolsonaro for his disastrous policies during the pandemic.”

“I feel exhausted,” Amparo added. “But the results show we do not have the time to rest now. It is time to go out onto the streets ... otherwise we are going to have a very dark future again.”

More on tonight’s result:

“I think Bolsonaro has the momentum,” said Thomas Traumann, a Rio de Janeiro-based political observer, although he believed Lula was still the favourite. “It’s a very disappointing night for the left.”

Bolsonaro is also accused of wreaking havoc on the environment and catastrophically mishandling a Covid epidemic that killed nearly 700,000 Brazilians, by undermining vaccination and containment efforts and peddling quack cures.

“It’s been a joke-slash-tragedy,” restaurant host Gabriela Leoncio said of Bolsonaro’s administration as she cast her vote for Lula on Sunday morning in São Paulo.

Despite that, Bolsonaro confounded the forecasts of pollsters in several key states, including Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.

Prominent Bolsonaristas were elected to Brazil’s congress and as state governors, including Bolsonaro’s former health minister, Eduardo Pazzuelo, who became a congressman for Rio, and his former environment minister Ricardo Salles. Rio’s Bolsonaro-supporting governor Cláudio Castro was re-elected while one of Bolsonaro’s most controversial former ministers, the evangelical preacher Damares Alves, claimed a place in the senate. Tarcísio de Freitas, Bolsonaro’s candidate for the governorship of São Paulo, also performed better than pollsters predicted and will face Lula ally Fernando Haddad in a second round.

There was defiance from Lula and his allies as the right-wing successes and the need for a second round became clear.

Lula wins vote but not outright victory

Brazil’s acrimonious presidential race will go to a second round after the former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva failed to secure the overall majority he needed to avoid a run-off with the far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro.

With 97% of votes counted the leftist veteran had secured 47.88% of the vote, not enough to avoid the 30 October show down with his right-wing rival. Bolsonaro, who significantly out-performed pollsters’s predictions and will be buoyed by the result, received 43.68%.

Speaking on the eve of the election Lula said he was hopeful of a first round win but would redouble his efforts to reclaim power if a second round was needed.

“I feel great hope that this election will be decided tomorrow, but if it isn’t we’ll have to behave like a football team when a match goes to extra time. We’ll rest for 15 minutes and then we’ll get back out onto the pitch to score the goals we didn’t score in normal time,” he told reporters.

The election result was a blow to progresssive Brazilians who had been rooting for an emphatic victory over Bolsonaro, a former army captain who has repeatedly attacked the country’s democratic institutions and vandalized Brazil’s international reputation.

Updated

We’re almost there – Lula at least looks certain to have won this round. But a run-off against Bolsonaro is virtually guaranteed by this point.

We’ll bring you Lula’s speech tonight as it happens.

The Guardian’s Latin America correspondent, Tom Phillips, is waiting to hear from Lula after a disappointing night.

With almost 97% of votes counted, we’re likely to know the result within the half-hour.

Here is some analysis of what is happening tonight, via the Associated press.

It appears increasingly likely neither of the top two candidates in Brazil’s national elections will receive more than 50% of the valid votes, which exclude spoiled and blank ballots, which would mean a second round vote will be scheduled for 30 October.

“We will most likely have a second round,” said Nara Pavão, who teaches political science at the Federal University of Pernambuco. “The probability of ending the election now (in the first round) is too small.”

“The far-right has shown great resilience in the presidential and in the state races,” said Carlos Melo, a political science professor at Insper University in São Paulo.

“It is too soon to go too deep, but this election shows Bolsonaro’s victory in 2018 was not a hiccup,” he added.

Bolsonaro outperformed in Brazil’s southeast region, which includes populous São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais states, according to Rafael Cortez, who oversees political risk at consultancy Tendencias Consultoria.

“The polls didn’t capture that growth,” Cortez said.

With counting almost complete, a first-round win looks out of reach for Lula, which means that he is likely to go head-to-head with Bolsonaro in run-off elections on 30 October.

A win for Lula in that round is by no means guaranteed.

Political economist Filipe Campante:

Andrew Downie reports for the Guardian from São Paulo:

Two big Senate wins in the south of Brazil for Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. In Paraná state, Sergio Moro won election with 33.6% of the votes and in Rio Grande do Sul, Hamilton Mourão, also romped home with 44.3%.

A former army general, Mourão was Bolsonaro’s vice president, while Moro was the judge who spearheaded the Car Wash investigation that led to the jailing of Lula in 2017.

Bolsonaro appointed Moro as his justice minister but his image as an anti-corruption crusader was damaged when more senior courts annulled his decision to jail Lula and set the former president free.

An investigation by The Intercept showed that Moro colluded with prosecutors to prejudice Lula’s defence.

He tried to run for president but his campaign never got off the ground and after back-and-forth talks with parties in at least two different states he opted to run for Senate in his home state.

Mourão, meanwhile, defeated veteran PT figure Olivio Dutra, a former governor of Rio Grande do Sul.

Lula is now ahead by almost 4% – but has not secured enough of the vote to avoid a run-off with Bolsonaro. And counting is almost over.

My apologies – I got the maths wrong in that last post (and have now updated it). For Lula to win, he would need to win almost all of the remaining votes, not over half of the remaining votes. It is extremely, extremely unlikely that there will not be a runoff.

Updated

We’re getting closer to a final result – but it still looks unlikely that Lula will secure an outright win. If he fails to get more than 50% of the vote, Brazilians will head to the polls again on 30 October for a run-off election.

It is still technically possible for him to win – he would need almost every remaining vote.

Updated

Who is Lula? Former shoe-shiner, factory worker and the man Barack Obama once called “the most popular president on earth”.

From my colleague Tom Philips:

After winning the 2002 Brazil elections, Lula used the windfall from a commodities boom to help millions of citizens escape poverty and became a respected international statesman, helping Brazil secure the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics.

Lula left power in 2010 with approval ratings nearing 90%. But the following decade was a brutal one for the leftist and his party. The PT became embroiled in a series of sprawling corruption scandals and was blamed for plunging Brazil into a savage recession. Lula’s successor, Dilma Rousseff, was impeached in 2016 in what many supporters called a political “coup”.

Two years later Lula was jailed after being convicted on corruption charges that were last year quashed, paving the way for his sensational bid to reclaim the presidency.

Lula would spend 580 days behind bars, during which time the far-right former soldier Jair Bolsonaro was elected, ushering in an era of Amazon destruction and international isolation.

But the veteran leftist appears to have used his jail time wisely, plotting what just a few years ago seemed an unthinkable return to the presidential palace in Brasília.

On Saturday, Lula said he would hit the streets of São Paulo on election night to party. “To rise from the ashes as we have risen,” he said, “is cause for great, great joy and celebration.”

With more than 80% of votes counted, Lula has gained a bit of ground in his lead over Bolsonaro.

But it is looking highly unlikely – though not yet technically impossible – that he will get the more than 50% needed to win outright and avoid a runoff.

Updated

The Guardian’s Latin America correspondent Tom Phillips reports from outside Lula’s hotel, where his lead over Bolsonaro was recently announced:

There were scenes of joy outside Lula’s hotel as the news was reported. “I feel inexplicable emotion. It’s like a World Cup final,” said Liliane Carvalho, a 41-year-old activist wearing a red cap emblazoned with the slogan: “Make Lula President Again.”

Carvalho said she was convinced Lula was heading for a first round victory. But Brazil’s top pollster, DataFolha, is now predicting the presidential election will go to a second round on 30 October.

A supporter of former President and presidential candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva reacts as people gather after polling stations were closed in the presidential election, in Sao Paulo, Brazil 2 October 2022.
A supporter of former President and presidential candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva reacts as people gather after polling stations were closed in the presidential election, in Sao Paulo, Brazil 2 October 2022. Photograph: Amanda Perobelli/Reuters

Updated

Datafolha survey predicts run-off

The polling company Datafolha is predicting that the election will go to a second-round on 30 October, which means Lula will have failed to gain more than 50% of the vote in this round – a surprising result given pre-polling that showed the leftwing frontrunner securing a comfortable win.

If you’re just joining us, Brazilians voted Sunday in a highly polarised election that could determine if the country returns a leftist to the helm of the world’s fourth-largest democracy or keeps the far-right incumbent in office for another four years.

With 70% of the vote counted, frontrunner and former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of the Workers Party was just ahead of incumbent far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.

The winner needs to secure more than 50% of the vote to avoid a run-off election. If the election goes to runoff, it will happen on 30 October.

Recent opinion polls have given da Silva (known as Lula) a commanding lead. The last Datafolha survey published Saturday found a 50% to 36% advantage for da Silva among those who intended to vote. It interviewed 12,800 people, with a margin of error of two percentage points.

Lula takes the lead with 70% of votes counted

After a nail-biting first hour of counting –and with another tense hour or so to go – leftwing frontrunner Lula has overtaken Bolsonaro in the Brazilian presidential elections.

Lula currently has 45.74% of the vote, to Bolsonaro’s 45.51%.

The Guardian’s Tom Philips reports from outside Lula’s hotel in São Paulo:

Updated

We’re expecting Lula to overtake Bolsonaro any minute now – but that won’t mean its over. Lula needs more than 50% to win outright – less than that, and he will have to fight Bolsonaro in a runoff election later this month.

Polls had predicted an outright win for Lula, but a runoff is now looking possible.

In order to be declared the winner, a presidential candidate in Brazil needs to gain more than 50% of the vote.

Polls on the eve of the election suggested Lula – who governed from 2003 to 2010 – was tantalisingly close to securing the overall majority of votes he needs to avoid a second-round runoff against Bolsonaro in late October. One poll gave Lula 51% to Bolsonaro’s 37%, another gave them 50% and 36% respectively.

Results are coming in fast, and Bolsonaro continues to lose ground. For the first time since counting started, he now leads by less than 1%.

Narrower still – Lula is closing in on Bolsonaro, with the margin now 1.3%.

Via Tom Phillips, the Guardian’s Latin America correspondent.

Updated

Bolsonaro in the lead with half of votes counted

With more than 50% of votes counted, Bolsonaro is still ahead.

The last Datafolha survey published Saturday found a 50% to 36% advantage for da Silva among those who intended to vote. It interviewed 12,800 people.

Bolsonaro’s lead is steadily dwindling, however. It is now less than 2%.

Updated

Bolsonaro’s lead over Lula looks like it is closing as votes from traditionally pro-Lula areas, such as the northeast of Brazil, are tallied.

The Guardian’s Latin America correspondent, Tom Phillips, reports that there is “Real tension in the air at Lula’s vote count gathering in São Paulo, but his supporters are confident that the tables are starting to turn. The question is will they turn enough for Lula to avoid a second round.”

Supporters of Brazil's former President and presidential candidate for the leftist Workers Party (PT) Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva gather on a street to watch the vote count of the legislative and presidential election, in Brasilia, Brazil, on 2 October 2022.
Supporters of Brazil's former President and presidential candidate for the leftist Workers Party (PT) Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva gather on a street to watch the vote count of the legislative and presidential election, in Brasilia, Brazil, on 2 October 2022. Photograph: Ernesto Benavides/AFP/Getty Images

Lula immersed himself in the labour movement and in 1979 led a series of historic strikes, cementing his position as Brazil’s most famous union leader and paving the way for the creation of the Workers’ party (PT) Lula leads to this day.

After claiming power in 2002, Lula used the windfall from a commodities boom to help millions of citizens escape poverty and became a respected international statesman, helping Brazil secure the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics.

Former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva poses as he arrives to vote,in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on 2 October 2022.
Former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva poses as he arrives to vote,in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on 2 October 2022. Photograph: Fernando Bizerra/EPA

“He made Brazil a significant player on the world scene … Brazil was a serious country – it helped create the G20, it established relations … with the Brics [Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa]. Brazilians were nominated to run the WTO and the FAO,” said Richard Bourne, Lula’s British biographer.

Lula left power in 2010 with approval ratings nearing 90%. But the following decade was a brutal one for the leftist and his party. The PT became embroiled in a series of sprawling corruption scandals and was blamed for plunging Brazil into a savage recession. Lula’s successor, Dilma Rousseff, was impeached in 2016 in what many supporters called a political “coup”.

With 40% of votes counted, Bolsonaro is still ahead of Lula, but by a smaller and smaller margin as more results come in – leftwing frontrunner Lula is trailing the far-right incumbent by just 2.85%:

Scottish journalist Andrew Downie reports for the Guardian from São Paulo:

Jair Bolsonaro got some encouraging news in the capital Brasilia, where his former minister Damares Alves was elected Senator. With 90% of the votes counted, Damares had 45%, well ahead of Flavia Arruda on 26.8%.

The lawyer and evangelical pastor has been one of Bolsonaro’s most fervent supporters, named as Minister for Women, Family and Human Rights in a controversial decision in December 2018.

Damares Alves, Jair Bolsonaro’s former minister, has been elected Senator in the 2022 Brazilian elections.
Damares Alves, Jair Bolsonaro’s former minister, has been elected Senator in the 2022 Brazilian elections. Photograph: Adriano Machado/Reuters

She courted controversy just days later when she said a new era had begun in which “boys wear blue and girls wear pink.”

She also said that when she was 10 years old she was going to drink poison and kill herself but saw Jesus climbing a goiaba tree. The revelation, she said, saved her life.

The Senate race was seen as one of those to watch on a day when 27 of Brazil’s 81 Senators face re-election and a surprise given that just last week a TV Globo poll put the two leading candidates, both of whom were ministers under Bolsonaro, tied on 28%.

Updated

Here is more on that early lead for Bolsonaro, via Reuters:

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro took an early lead in the initial tally of the country’s presidential election on Sunday, ahead of challenger Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (Lula), whose Workers Party draws more support from regions that are slower to report.

With 20% of electronic voting machines counted, Bolsonaro was ahead with 48% of the votes against 43% for Lula, the national electoral authority said on its website.

In 2014, when the leftist Workers Party (PT) last won a presidential election, its advantage only appeared after two hours of vote counting. Results from Brazil’s poorer northeast, a traditional PT stronghold, often take longer to reach the TSE.

There were reports of long lines at voting stations that closed at 5pm (2000 GMT) as many Brazilians turned out to vote in a tense election, punctuated by isolated violence and fears over a sharp uptick in gun ownership under Bolsonaro.

Most opinion polls have shown Lula with a 10-15% lead, but Bolsonaro has signalled he may refuse to accept defeat, stoking fears of institutional crisis. If Lula wins over 50% of valid votes, which several pollsters show within reach, he would clinch an outright victory, foregoing a run-off.

If no candidate wins over half of the votes, excluding blank and spoiled ballots, the top two go to a 30 October run-off.

With that, here is more on Lula, the man expected to defeat far-right Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro.

Lula is one of Latin America’s most influential and enduring politicians – a silver-tongued statesman Barack Obama once hailed as “the most popular president on Earth”.

But had it not been for a chiding from Fidel Castro nearly four decades ago, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva might well have abandoned what would prove one of the most storied political careers the region has ever known.

“He gave him a bollocking,” Lula’s biographer and friend, Fernando Morais, said of the moment the Cuban revolutionary took the Brazilian unionist to task for considering throwing in the towel after failing in his bid to become São Paulo’s governor in 1982.

“Listen, Lula … You don’t have the right to abandon politics. You don’t have the right to do this to the working class,” Castro told the Brazilian during a trip to Havana, according to Morais’s bestselling biography. “Get back into politics!”

Lula’s chronicler believes it was a pivotal moment in the life of his 76-year-old subject, who took his Cuban host’s advice to heart.

Some sharp-eyed readers have pointed out that int he screenshot I posted of the results, lula’s name has been replaced with the word “squid” (the word “Lula” means squid in Portuguese). This message is brought to you by Google Translate.

Updated

Quarter of votes counted

With just over 25% of votes counted, Bolsonaro is still ahead, but is lead over Lula – who is widely expected to win – has narrowed slightly, from around 6% to just over 4%.

Brazilians voted Sunday in a highly polarised election that could determine if the country returns a leftist to the helm of the world’s fourth-largest democracy or keeps the far-right incumbent in office for another four years.

The race pits incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro against his political nemesis, former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, known as Lula. There are nine other candidates, but they have far less support than the two frontrunners.

The last Datafolha survey published Saturday found a 50% to 36% advantage for da Silva among those who intended to vote. It interviewed 12,800 people, with a margin of error of two percentage points.

Gabriela Leoncio has been waiting for the chance to free Brazil from Jair Bolsonaro for four years. On Sunday that chance came.

“It’s been a joke-slash-tragedy,” the restaurant host, 29, said of the president’s tumultuous far-right administration as she cast her vote against him in her country’s most important election in decades.

Leoncio, who was sporting a bright red T-shirt, cap and earrings celebrating the leftwing frontrunner, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said she was optimistic her candidate would prevail when 156 million Brazilians chose their new leader.

“One phase is coming to an end and another phase, of change and hope, is beginning,” she enthused as voters filed into the polling station near Augusta Street in São Paulo, where Lula had held his final campaign event the previous afternoon.

Other voters voiced similar confidence that Bolsonaro’s presidency, during which Amazon devastation skyrocketed, millions were plunged into poverty and Covid killed more than 685,000 Brazilians, was finally coming to an end.

Bolsonaro’s lead over Lula has narrowed slightly as more of the votes are counted.

With just over 20% counted, Bolsonaro has 47.93% to Lula’s 43.32%.

A few minutes ago, it was 48.2% to 43%.

Here is more of what Brazilian voters had to say as they headed to the polls earlier today, via the AP:

Social worker Nadja Oliveira, 59, said she voted for da Silva and even attended his rallies, but since 2018 votes for Bolsonaro.

“Unfortunately the Workers’ Party disappointed us. It promised to be different,” she said in Brasilia.

Others, like Marialva Pereira, are more forgiving. She said she would vote for the former president for the first time since 2002.

“I didn’t like the scandals in his first administration, never voted for the Workers’ Party again. Now I will, because I think he was unjustly jailed and because Bolsonaro is such a bad president that it makes everyone else look better,” said Pereira, 47.

Supporters of former President of Brazil and Candidate for the Worker’s Party (PT) Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva wait for results at the end of the general election day on 2 October 2022 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Supporters of former President of Brazil and Candidate for the Worker’s Party (PT) Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva wait for results at the end of the general election day on 2 October 2022 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Photograph: Buda Mendes/Getty Images

Speaking after casting his ballot in Sao Bernardo do Campo, the manufacturing hub in Sao Paulo state where he was a union leader, da Silva recalled that four years ago he was imprisoned and unable to vote.

“I want to try to make the country return to normality, try to make this country again take care of its people,” he told reporters.

Updated

The Guardian’s Latin America correspondent Tom Phillips is in São Paulo:

Brazil-based journalist Ana Ionova reports for the Guardian from Rio that authorities in Brazil registered more than 200 electoral crimes across the country on Sunday.

Brazil’s Justice Ministry said there were 222 electoral infractions at voting stations as of 12:40pm local time, with most consisting of illegally campaigning, asking for votes or promoting candidates.

In the city of Goiânia, a supermarket selling discounted steaks to supporters of President Jair Bolsonaro – dubbing the promotion “picanha Mito,” after a popular nickname for the president – was reported to authorities and ordered to halt the promotion.

There were also cases of voters tampering with electronic machines. In the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, a 22-year-old man was arrested after gluing the buttons of one voting machine, in an attempt to impede other voters.

There were also isolated cases of violent crime during Sunday’s vote. In São Paulo, two men opened fire at military police at a polling station, leaving two officers in serious condition.

Updated

With just 12% of votes counted, Bolsonaro is in the lead, with 48.2% to Lula’s 43%. But is is very early in the counting, and this is unlikely to reflect the final result.

The last Datafolha survey, which interviewed 12,800 people, with a margin of error of two percentage points, have Lula a 50% to 36% advantage over Bolsonaro.

This is interesting from Reuters reporter Gabriel Stargardter:

Do you have questions about the Brazilian elections? Let me know on Twitter @helenrsullivan and I’ll do my best to answer.

In case you’re just joining us:

Brazilians voted Sunday in a highly polarised election that could determine if the country returns a leftist to the helm of the world’s fourth-largest democracy or keeps the far-right incumbent in office for another four years.

The race pits incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro against his political nemesis, former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. There are nine other candidates, but their support pales to that for Bolsonaro and da Silva.

Recent opinion polls have given da Silva a commanding lead. The last Datafolha survey published Saturday found a 50% to 36% advantage for da Silva among those who intended to vote. It interviewed 12,800 people, with a margin of error of two percentage points.

Updated

How are votes collected in Brazil's remotest areas?

The Associated Press has this explainer on how votes are collected in Amazonas’ remote Javari Valley region.

Thanks to the efforts of Bruno Pereira, the Indigenous expert slain this year alongside British journalist Dom Phillips, collecting votes in Amazonas’ remote Javari Valley region is less fraught than in recent years.

Villages in the Javari Valley territory received their first voting centers in 2014. To deliver a voting machine to the most distant village, Vida Nova, election officials usually fly in a small plane from Manaus to Cruzeiro do Sul, a city in Acre state. There, they board a helicopter for the final leg. It is a 1,000-mile round-trip voyage to reach a place with 327 voters, in a nation with an electorate of more than 150 million people.

Xukuru's indigenous people sing a sacred prayer in honour of late Brazilian indigenous expert Bruno Pereira during his funeral at the Morada da Paz Cemetery in Paulista, Pernambuco state, Brazil, on June 24, 2022. Pereira, 41, and British journalist Dom Phillips, 57, were shot while returning from an expedition in the Javari Valley, a remote region of the rainforest.
Xukuru's indigenous people sing a sacred prayer in honour of late Brazilian indigenous expert Bruno Pereira during his funeral at the Morada da Paz Cemetery in Paulista, Pernambuco state, Brazil, on June 24, 2022. Pereira, 41, and British journalist Dom Phillips, 57, were shot while returning from an expedition in the Javari Valley, a remote region of the rainforest. Photograph: Brenda Alcântara/AFP/Getty Images

Until 2012, the region’s only voting centres were in the city of Atalaia do Norte. That year, a mayoral candidate distributed gasoline to about 1,200 Indigenous people from the Javari Valley Indigenous Territory so they could make the multi-day trip downriver to vote.

The candidate hadn’t provided enough fuel for their return trip, however. They were stranded on the riverbanks for weeks without proper sanitation, prompting a rotavirus outbreak. Five Kanamari babies died and some 100 people were hospitalised.

At the time, Pereira led the local bureau of Brazil’s agency for Indigenous affairs. He provided them with food and water, and coordinated a quarantine to prevent the virus from reaching Indigenous villages. Later, he and local Indigenous leaders developed a plan for transporting electronic voting machines to remote villages.

A Lula victory would represent the latest in a series of triumphs for a resurgent Latin American left, following the election of leftist leaders in Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia and Chile.

“I’m going to win these elections so I can give the people the right to be happy again. The people need, deserve and have the right … to be happy once more,” Lula told journalists as he wrapped up his campaigning with a parade through the streets of São Paulo on Saturday.

The prospect of a Lula victory has galvanised leftwing and centrist Brazilians after four years under Bolsonaro during which nearly 700,000 people died of Covid and more than 30 million were plunged into poverty and hunger.

“I feel hope,” the former president’s biographer and friend Fernando Morais told the Guardian as he prepared to vote wearing a Jeremy Corbyn T-shirt. “I feel like going out and distributing kisses.”

From the Guardian’s Latin America correspondent, Tom Phillips, who is on the ground in São Paulo:

Brazil’s leftwing former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva appeared on the verge of a startling political comeback on Sunday as more than 156 million Brazilians took part in the country’s most important election in decades.

As the veteran ex-president cast his vote in Brazil’s industrial heartlands on Sunday morning, Lula voiced optimism he was heading for victory over the far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro.

“We want no more hatred, no more quarrelling, we want a country that lives in peace,” the 76-year-old told reporters in São Bernardo do Campo, the city where he began his legendary political career as a unionist in the 1970s.

Polls on the eve of the election suggested Lula – who governed from 2003 to 2010 – was tantalisingly close to securing the overall majority of votes he needs to avoid a second-round runoff against Bolsonaro in late October. One poll gave Lula 51% to Bolsonaro’s 37%, another gave them 50% and 36% respectively.

The Guardian’s Latin America correspondent, Tom Phillips, is on the ground in São Paulo:

Updated

The Associated Press spoke to voters on Sunday. Here is what a few of them had to say:

Fernanda Reznik, a 48-year-old health worker, wore a red T-shirt a color associated with da Silva’s Workers’ Party to vote in Copacabana, where pro-Bolsonaro demonstrators often congregate, and had been waiting in line for 40 minutes.

“I’ll wait three hours if I have to!” said Reznik, who no longer bothers talking politics with neighbours who favour Bolsonaro.

“This year the election is more important, because we already went through four years of Bolsonaro and today we can make a difference and give this country another direction.”

Supporters of Brazil's former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva react as they gather after polling stations were closed in the presidential election, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on 2 October 2022.
Supporters of Brazil's former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva react as they gather after polling stations were closed in the presidential election, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on 2 October 2022. Photograph: Pilar Olivares/Reuters

Marley Melo, a 53-year-old trader in capital Brasilia, sported the yellow of the Brazilian flag, which Bolsonaro and his supporters have coopted for demonstrations.

Melo said he is once again voting for Bolsonaro, who met his expectations, and he doesn’t believe the surveys that show him trailing.

“Polls can be manipulated. They all belong to companies with interests,” he said.

Bolsonaro supporters gather in front one of the president’s homes in Barra da Tijuca, Rio de Janeiro on 2 October 2022.
Bolsonaro supporters gather in front one of the president’s homes in Barra da Tijuca, Rio de Janeiro on 2 October 2022. Photograph: Wagner Meier/Getty Images

How are votes counted?

Despite the fact that Brazil is the world’s fourth-largest democracy, results from more than 150 million eligible voters are presented mere hours after polls close, thanks to the country’s electronic voting system. And no significant fraud has ever been detected, the AP reports.

Electronic machines were first used in 1996 and the first nationwide, electronic-only vote took place four years later.

Brazilian authorities adopted electronic voting machines to tackle longstanding fraud. In earlier elections, ballot boxes arrived at voting stations already stuffed with votes. Others were stolen and individual votes were routinely falsified, according to Brazil’s electoral authority.

A month ago, President Jair Bolsonaro was feeding concern about the nation’s electronic voting system. He has long insisted that the machines, used for a quarter-century, are prone to fraud, though he acknowledged last year that hasn’t been proved.

Brazil’s top electoral authority maintain the system has been tested rigorously.

Supporters and allies of Brazil’s ex-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, are streaming into a hotel in downtown São Paulo hoping to celebrate a first round win in Brazil’s acrimonious presidential election.

Speaking to the Guardian as she arrived at the event, the president of Lula’s leftist Worker’s party (PT), said she was optimistic about their chances of returning to power and defeating the far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro.

“We feel confident ... we feel real happiness. We have faced hard and difficult moments but we have prevailed through our resistance and our unflinching belief in our cause,” Gleisi Hoffmann said.

Hoffman said Bolsonaro, an ally of Donald Trump, would fail if he tried to contest the result like his North American friend.

“[Bolsonaro] will have to respect the result. He isn’t bigger than Brazil or Brazil’s institutions,” she said.

Updated

Who is Jair Bolsonaro?

Since 2019, far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro has has led an administration marked by incendiary speech, his testing of democratic institutions, his widely criticised handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and the worst deforestation in the Amazon rainforest in 15 years.

But he has built a devoted base by defending conservative values, rebuffing political correctness and presenting himself as protecting the nation from leftist policies that he says infringe on personal liberties and produce economic turmoil.

President Jair Messias Bolsonaro votes at Rosa da Fonseca municipal school, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
President Jair Messias Bolsonaro votes at Rosa da Fonseca municipal school, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Who is Lula?

Brazilian frontrunner Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, became the country’s first working-class president in 2002.

Lula stepped down after two terms in 2010 with approval ratings close to 90%. But the following decade saw the Workers’ party (PT) he helped found embroiled in a tangle of corruption scandals and accused of plunging Brazil into a brutal recession.

Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva kisses his voting receipt in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva kisses his voting receipt in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Photograph: Fernando Bizerra/EPA

His apparently irremediable downfall was cemented in 2018 when he was jailed on corruption charges and barred from running in that year’s election, which Bolsonaro went on to win. Lula’s 580-day imprisonment seemed a melancholy end to a fairytale life that saw him rise from rural poverty to become one of the world’s most popular leaders.

But Lula was freed in late 2019 and his convictions were quashed on the grounds that he was unfairly tried by Sérgio Moro, a rightwing judge who later took a job in Bolsonaro’s cabinet.

Lula, who first sought the presidency in 1989, announced his sixth presidential run in May, vowing to beat Bolsonaro by staging “the greatest peaceful revolution the world has ever seen”.

Updated

Voting closes in Brazil elections

Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the Brazilian elections. I’m Helen Sullivan, and I’ll be taking you through the results as they come in. Counting has already started and the result is likely to be called within the next few hours.

Polls ahead of the election suggest that the country’s leftwing candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who was president from 2003 to 2010 may secure an outright win – avoiding a second run-off.

One poll gave Lula 51% to Bolsonaro’s 37%, another gave them 50% and 36% respectively.

Updated

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