The ultraright candidate of the Liberal Party (PL) for the Presidency of Brazil and son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, Flávio Bolsonario, has won in the first round of the Brazilian elections by obtaining 47.17% of the votes. His opponent and outgoing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has come behind with 45.00% of the votes.
As neither of the candidates reached the absolute majority required to declare themselves the direct winner, a second round will be held between the two on October 25, in which it will be decided who will be the next head of state of Brazil.
Bolsonario has surpassed Lula by about 2.5 million ballots, gathering more than 55 million votes. The PL representative has won in the three states with the largest electoral roll: Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, and Sao Paulo, achieving in the latter two more than half of the votes, with 53.02% and 51.93%, respectively.
In the Senate, the former first lady and wife of Jair Bolsonaro, Michelle Bolsonaro, has been elected senator for the Federal District, in Brasilia, after obtaining 29% of the votes in the legislative elections.
The influence of the Bolsonaro family has been reinforced with three other positions obtained in these elections. The second son of the former president, Carlos Bolsonaro, has been elected as the second senator for the state of Santa Catarina. In turn, Jair Renan Bolsonaro --also the son of the former president-- has secured a seat in the Chamber of Deputies for that same state, while Renato Bolsonaro --brother of Jair-- has been proclaimed federal deputy for Sao Paulo.
These results are already considered definitive with 99.18% of the count completed and 495,237 electoral sections totaled out of the 499,248 enabled by the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), the highest authority responsible for organizing the process.
According to the latest official bulletin, voter turnout has been 78.93%, with 1.84% of blank votes and 2.93% of null votes. In Brazil, voting is voluntary from the age of 16 and mandatory for citizens between 18 and 70 years old.