Flavio Bolsonaro takes 47 percent and forces Lula into a 25 October runoff

Flavio Bolsonaro won the first round of Brazil's presidential election without winning it outright. With nearly all votes counted from Sunday's ballot, he had about 47 percent of valid votes to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's 45 percent, the BBC reported. A count cited from the Superior Electoral Court put the raw figures at 56.1 million votes for Bolsonaro and 53.8 million for Lula. Neither passed half of the valid vote. They meet in a runoff on 25 October.

The first-round margin is small, and it reversed the published polls. Datafolha, in a survey of 4,006 interviews released the Saturday before the vote, had Lula at 45 percent of valid votes and Flavio Bolsonaro at 42 percent. Quaest had the president five points ahead. The other four candidates on the ballot, Ronaldo Caiado, Renan Santos, Augusto Cury and Romeu Zema, took about 8 percent of valid votes between them. Several of those votes came from the right. That is why the second round is being described as Bolsonaro's to lose even though he did not reach 50 percent on Sunday.

Flavio is the son of Jair Bolsonaro, who is serving a 27-year prison sentence for masterminding a failed coup after he lost the 2022 election. The father cannot stand. The son carried the name into first place. Lula, 80, said after voting that the choice was between democracy and what he called barbarism. Donald Trump, speaking to reporters at the White House, called the first round a very big victory for Bolsonaro and said he expected the election to be close.

The arithmetic of a Brazilian runoff is plain. Only the top two remain. Votes cast for the four eliminated candidates do not transfer by rule. They have to be won again, or they stay home. Eight percent is enough to decide a race that is already inside two points. If most of that 8 percent sits on the right, Flavio starts the second round ahead of the polls that had him behind. If a share of it was a protest against both finalists, the gap can close. The TSE totals are the baseline: 56.1 million to 53.8 million, 47 to 45, three weeks to add the rest.

Lula is seeking another term at 80 after a first-round scare he did not have in 2022, when he beat Jair Bolsonaro in the runoff. The electorate that put the son 2.3 million votes ahead of the incumbent on Sunday is not the electorate those earlier polls described. Campaigns will now spend the three weeks on the voters who chose Caiado, Zema and the smaller names, and on turnout. Abstention in a second round can matter as much as conversion.

The legal status of the father sits in the background and not on the ballot. A 27-year sentence for a coup attempt is a fact about Jair Bolsonaro. It did not stop the son taking a first-round lead. Trump's White House remark puts Washington on the record before 25 October, which Brazilian campaigns will use in both directions.

The date is fixed. The candidates are fixed. The open count is the 8 percent that belonged to someone else on Sunday, and the question of whether Lula can find 2 points in it before 25 October or whether Flavio's lead holds once the field is only two names.