www.universalcurrentaffairs.com

Brazil election goes to runoff as Bolsonaro beats polls.

Brazil’s presidential election is headed for a run-off vote, electoral authorities said on Sunday, after President Jair Bolsonaro’s surprising strength in the first round spoiled rival Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s hopes of winning outright.

With 99.7% of electronic votes counted, Lula was ahead with 48.4% of votes versus 43.3% for Bolsonaro, the national electoral authority reported. As neither got a majority of support, the race will go to a second-round vote on Oct. 30.

Several opinion surveys had shown the leftist Lula, who was president from 2003 to 2010, leading the far-right Bolsonaro by 10-15 percentage points ahead of Sunday’s vote. The much tighter result dashed hopes of a quick resolution to a deeply polarized election in the world’s fourth-largest democracy.

Bolsonaro had questioned polls that showed him losing to Lula in the first round, saying they did not capture enthusiasm he saw on the campaign trail. He has also attacked the integrity of Brazil’s electronic voting system without evidence, and suggested he might not concede if he lost.

Political observers had said a wide margin of victory for Lula could sap Bolsonaro of support to challenge the electoral results. But Sunday’s vote, extending a tense and violent election by another four weeks, revitalized his campaign.

Lula put an optimistic spin on the result, saying that it would only postpone his victory and that he looked forward to going head-to-head with Bolsonaro in a debate.

Source: www.reuters.com

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