How the election works
Brazil’s president is directly elected: each voter’s ballot counts equally and there is no electoral college. If no candidate wins more than 50% of the valid votes cast in the first round, a second runoff election will be held three weeks later between the two candidates who polled highest.
According to opinion polls, there are two leading candidates. The first is the incumbent president, Lula, 80, a veteran of the Brazilian left who has served three terms. During his first two terms, between 2003 and 2011, he was credited with overseeing a historic period of commodity-fuelled growth and poverty reduction.
