Brazil's presidential election heads to runoff between Bolsonara and Lula

Supporters of Flávio Bolsonaro celebrated across Brazil on Sunday as the conservative senator went through to the second round of the presidential election.

Bolsonaro will now face incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in a runoff vote on October 25th.

Bolsonaro won just over 56 million votes to Lula’s 53.7 million. Brazil’s electoral board said neither candidate had achieved the majority needed for an outright win.

“Brazil wants change, that’s the reading of what happened today,” Bolsonaro told reporters on Sunday. “It’s the end of the Workers’ Party era,” he added, in a reference to Lula's party.

Eighty-year-old Lula is running for a fourth non-consecutive term. He said Sunday's outcome was a surprise:

“The result is often unexpected, we never get everything we wanted. I confess to you that I was convinced I was going to win the election in the first round.”

With the campaign moving into the last stretch, both men are expected to target undecided voters and those who abstained in the first round.

"We had 20 million people who did not show up to vote," Lula said after the vote, "28 million people. And we are going to make an appeal so that people know that at this historic moment in Brazil, voting is necessary for us to define the future of this country."

The outcome presents a pivotal moment for Latin America's largest economy and its population of 214 million, with the next presidential term set to begin on January 5, 2027.

Victory for Bolsonaro would increase US influence in the region. If Lula wins, Brazil will keep its distance from Washington and strengthen ties with China.