Flávio Bolsonaro leads Lula into a 25 October runoff with 56.1 million votes

Brazil's Superior Electoral Court finished the presidential count with Senator Flávio Bolsonaro of the Liberal Party on 56,104,503 votes, 47.03 percent, and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers' Party on 53,879,538 votes, 45.16 percent. The two meet again on 25 October. Neither cleared the 50 percent needed to win in the first round on Sunday.

The gap is about 2.2 million votes. CNN Brasil, using a count at 99.99 percent of ballot boxes, had put Flávio at 56.1 million and Lula at 53.8 million before the court closed the tables. El Nacional reported the final figures after the court consolidated every station overnight into Monday. Flávio, 45, outpolled the first-round totals his father, Jair Bolsonaro, recorded in 2018 and 2022. Lula is 80 and is seeking a fourth term, not consecutive with his earlier presidencies.

The map splits along a familiar line and a few exceptions. Flávio carried Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, Paraná, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Espírito Santo, Minas Gerais, Goiás, the Federal District, Mato Grosso do Sul, Mato Grosso, Rondônia, Acre, Tocantins and Roraima. Lula carried Bahia, Sergipe, Alagoas, Pernambuco, Paraíba, Rio Grande do Norte, Ceará, Piauí, Maranhão, Pará, Amapá and Amazonas. The southeast and south, where the electorate is largest, sit with the Liberal Party candidate. The northeast, Lula's historic base, stayed with him and was not enough.

Other candidates now matter as a pool of second-round votes. Ronaldo Caiado, Renan Santos and Romeu Zema together took more than 5.5 million votes, the Guardian reported. A separate count put Cury and Santos together at 6.1 million and said both had declined to endorse either finalist. Santos called both Lula and Bolsonaro crooks and said he would back neither. Caiado said he would consult the leadership of the Social Democratic Party. Zema said he would vote against Lula. Since 1985, when direct presidential elections returned, no first-round runner-up has overturned the order in the second round. That record is a fact about past ballots. It is not a rule of the count on 25 October.

The congressional picture moved with the presidential one. The Liberal Party is set for 28 of 81 Senate seats, and with other hard-right lists the bloc reaches 43, the Guardian reported. Michelle Bolsonaro won a Senate seat. Nikolas Ferreira, 30, from Minas Gerais, and Lucas Pavanato each passed 3 million votes for the Chamber, the highest individual congressional totals in the country's history on the Guardian's account. Tarcísio de Freitas was re-elected governor of São Paulo. Sérgio Moro was elected governor of Paraná. A presidency that changes hands would meet a Congress already shifted toward the same camp.

Abstention is the other large number. About 33 million registered Brazilians did not vote, a record on the reporting used by the Guardian. Voting is compulsory for most literate adults between 18 and 70, with fines for unjustified absence, so that figure is not the same thing as a voluntary stay-at-home electorate. It still shrinks the pool that decided the order.

Lula told supporters the Workers' Party would open a new campaign and that a two-candidate race would let voters see the difference in proposals. The mood at his event was described as funereal by reporters on the scene. Flávio's camp treated the first-round lead as a path to the presidency. Javier Milei wrote that the American continent belongs to citizens who want to live in freedom. Benjamin Netanyahu wrote that he looked forward to restoring friendship between Israel and Brazil. Those notes are endorsements of a direction, not votes.

Jair Bolsonaro, 71, is serving a 27-year sentence under house arrest after a conviction for plotting a coup following his 2022 loss. He cannot stand. His eldest son is the name on the ballot. The family list on Sunday also included Michelle, Carlos, 43, and others in legislative races. The presidential election is therefore also a test of whether the movement continues without the father as candidate.

The open question for 25 October is mechanical. Flávio needs a share of the Caiado, Zema and Santos vote, or a rise in his own first-round voters, to pass 50 percent. Lula needs almost all of the remaining centre and left vote plus a slice of the right that refuses the Bolsonaro name. The court has three weeks to print a two-name ballot. The first-round arithmetic says the incumbent starts behind by 2.2 million votes in a country where the runner-up has not closed that kind of gap since redemocratisation.