Polls close at ۱۷.۰۰ BRT, ۲۰.۰۰ GMT, with first results expected within the hour.
Live second round results
Guardian graphic. Source: TSE
How the election works
Brazil’s president is elected purely by the popular vote. A winning candidate needs one more vote than ۵۰% of votes cast; there is no role for the parliament and no electoral college.
Because no candidate achieved ۵۰% in the first round on ۴ October, the two leading candidates go into a runoff. One of them is Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the incumbent leftwing president, commonly known as Lula. The other, and the leading candidate in the first round, is Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of the far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro senior is serving a ۲۷-year prison sentence for plotting a failed coup attempt after he lost to Lula in the ۲۰۲۲ election, but has endorsed his son and hopes to be released if he wins. Bolsonaro junior is a lawyer and former senator from Rio.
In ۲۰۲۲, Lula beat Jair Bolsonaro in the second round, with an electoral base concentrated in the north-east of the country, while Bolsonaro led in the south. But on that occasion Lula entered the second round as the leading candidate from the first round, and won the bellwether state of Minas Gerais, north of Rio de Janeiro. In the first round of the ۲۰۲۶ election, Bolsonaro beat Lula in Minas Gerais by ۴۸.۴۳% to ۴۳.۳۳%.
Never, since the return of democracy to Brazil in ۱۹۸۵, has the first round runner-up managed to turn the game around and win the second vote. But Lula’s campaign has been buoyed by massive, student-led anti-Bolsonaro protests after the first round and hopes to stage a historic fightback on Sunday.
Lula is already the longest-serving president in Brazil’s modern history, serving two terms from ۲۰۰۳ to ۲۰۱۰, before returning to office in ۲۰۲۳. He will turn ۸۱ on Tuesday. Bolsonaro is ۴۵.
