Brazil Presidential Runoff Today: Lula vs Flávio Bolsonaro in Dead Heat as 214 Million Voters Decide

Brazil votes on Sunday, October 25, in a presidential runoff that polls say is effectively tied, with incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva facing Senator Flávio Bolsonaro for leadership of Latin America's largest country and its 214 million people. Neither man cleared the 50 percent bar in the October 4 first round: Bolsonaro finished first with 47.03 percent, about 56.1 million votes, ahead of Lula on 45.16 percent, about 53.9 million.
Flávio Bolsonaro, 45, is the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who was sentenced to prison over the January 2023 storming of government buildings and is now under house arrest. The challenger has promised to seek pardons for his father and others convicted over that episode, while Lula, 80, is seeking a fourth term and has warned that the Bolsonaro family must not return to power. The campaign's final days were dominated by court battles: the Superior Electoral Court met with Meta after Bolsonaro asked it to annul Lula's candidacy over alleged WhatsApp government messaging, while Lula's team complained of algorithm bias, and the Supreme Federal Court ordered Flávio Bolsonaro to begin serving one of his sentences.
What should decide the race is turnout and the undecided. First-round abstention hit 21.08 percent, about 33 million voters, the highest in a Brazilian general election since 1998, and recent polls put Bolsonaro's lead at one point or less, inside the margin of error. Cost of living, public security, corruption and economic policy top voters' concerns, and Lula has rolled out targeted help for micro-entrepreneurs, including debt forgiveness and higher revenue thresholds, in a final appeal to small business and informal workers. Since 1989, no candidate who finished second in the first round has gone on to win a Brazilian runoff — a piece of history Lula must now overturn.
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