RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazil’s top two presidential candidates will face each other in a runoff vote after neither got enough support to win outright Sunday in an election to decide if the country returns a leftist to the helm of the world’s fourth-largest democracy or keeps the far-right incumbent in office.
With 99.9% of the votes tallied, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had 48.4% support and President Jair Bolsonaro had 43.2%. Nine other candidates were also competing, but their support pales to that for Bolsonaro and da Silva, who is commonly known as Lula.
The tightness of the result came as a surprise, since pre-election polls had given da Silva a commanding lead. The last Datafolha survey published Saturday had found a 50% to 36% advantage for da Silva. It interviewed 12,800 people, with a margin of error of 2 percentage points.
“This tight difference between Lula and Bolsonaro wasn’t predicted,” said Nara Pavão, who teaches political science at the Federal University of Pernambuco.
Speaking at a post-vote press conference, da Silva referred to the scheduled Oct. 30 runoff vote against Bolsonaro as “extra time” in a soccer game.
“I want to win every election in the first round. But it isn’t always possible,” he said.
Bolsonaro told reporters in capital city Brasilia that he understood there was “a desire for change” among the population, hard hit by the economic crisis and high inflation. “But certain changes can be for the worse.”
The president, who has repeatedly questioned the reliability of the country’s electronic machines, did not challenge Sunday night’s results, although he said he was waiting for more information from the Defense Ministry.
He added that his party’s good results in Congress – it won the most seats – could bring fresh support ahead of the Oct. 30 vote.
Bolsonaro outperformed expectations in Brazil’s southeast region, which includes populous Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais states, according to Rafael Cortez, who oversees political risk at consultancy Tendencias Consultoria.
Bolsonaro’s administration has been marked by incendiary speech, his testing of democratic institutions, his widely criticized 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.