Flávio Bolsonaro has stunned Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the first round of Brazil's presidential election, finishing ahead of the incumbent with 47% of the vote and setting up a bitter runoff on October 25. The result defied nearly every pre-election poll, which had shown Lula with a narrow lead, and immediately reshaped South America's most important political contest.
How the first round shook out
With more than 98% of ballots counted, Flávio Bolsonaro took 47.24% against Lula's 44.91%, according to Brazil's Superior Electoral Court data cited by IANS and The Times. Neither crossed the 50% threshold needed for an outright first-round win. The other 11 candidates combined for barely 8%, none topping 3%, leaving Brazil with a stark two-candidate choice on October 25.
Bolsonaro, a 45-year-old senator and the eldest son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, celebrated with a broad smile beside his wife Fernanda. "The end of the PT era has been confirmed," he declared, referring to Lula's Workers' Party. Lula, 80, admitted he had expected better: "I confess I was convinced I would win the election in the first round," he told supporters in São Paulo. "Starting tomorrow, we begin a new campaign."
The polling miss
The surprise cuts deep because pollsters had Lula ahead in most final surveys — just as they did in 2022 and 2018, when Jair Bolsonaro also outperformed expectations. That history is already giving the Bolsonaro camp ammunition: allies have long accused Brazil's leading pollsters of work biased toward Lula and the Workers' Party. The question now dominating Brazilian media: how did the surveys get it this wrong again?
Markets react: stocks soar
Investors cheered the right-wing surge. Brazil's stock market jumped 5.5% in early Monday trading, and the Brazilian real gained more than 4% against the US dollar, as the prospect of a Bolsonaro presidency raised expectations of market-friendly policy. Prediction markets moved sharply too — Polymarket pushed Flávio Bolsonaro's chances of winning the presidency to about 85%.
What the October 25 runoff holds
The dynamics favor the challenger: most eliminated candidates came from right-wing parties, and their voters are the natural reservoir for Bolsonaro's second-round campaign. Ronaldo Caiado and Renan Santos, both right-wing candidates with around 2% each, are expected to back him. Lula's path runs through the record 21% of registered voters who abstained — roughly 30 million people, more than ten times the 2.5-million-vote gap between the two finalists. "We are going to make an appeal so that people understand that at this historic moment for Brazil, it is essential to vote," Lula said.
There's also a wider political story: Bolsonaro family candidates swept congressional and gubernatorial races, with his brothers Carlos and Jair Renan and stepmother Michelle Bolsonaro all winning seats in Congress, while ally Tarcísio de Freitas was reelected governor of São Paulo, Brazil's economic powerhouse.
The takeaway
Three weeks of campaigning now decide whether Latin America's largest economy and fifth-largest nation swings decisively right. Lula must convince non-voters to show up; Bolsonaro must hold a coalition that already looks formidable. On October 25, Brazil votes — and the whole region will be watching.
📺 Watch: DW News breaks down Flávio Bolsonaro's shock first-round win over Lula.
Music in the video version: Kevin MacLeod - Long Road Ahead B (incompetech.com), licensed under CC BY 3.0.