Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva Wins Brazil's Runoff — Datafolha Calls Victory Over Flávio Bolsonaro With 99.77% Counted

 

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has won Brazil's presidential runoff. Polling institute Datafolha projected the victory on Sunday evening at 20:46 Brasília time, putting the incumbent on course for a fourth presidential term after one of the closest and most bitter elections in the country's history.

The official count from Brazil's Superior Electoral Court (TSE) left no room for doubt. With 99.77% of polling sections processed, Lula held 51.76% of valid votes — 64,076,924 ballots — against 48.24% for Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, with 59,727,910 votes. The gap stood at 4,349,014 votes with only a fraction of sections still to report.

Datafolha's election-night model, built on TSE returns grouped by geography and municipality, concluded that Bolsonaro could no longer close the gap. The projection is an independent statistical call, not the TSE's formal certification — but with the count all but complete, the result is settled.

A stunning reversal from the first round

Three weeks ago, the race looked very different. In the first round on October 4, Flávio Bolsonaro finished first with 47.03% of valid votes (56,104,268) against Lula's 45.16% (53,876,617), defying final polls that had put the president narrowly ahead. Neither candidate cleared the 50%-plus-one threshold, forcing Sunday's runoff between the two men.

On Sunday, Lula's stronghold in the Northeast delivered the margin. States across the region voted heavily for the president, while São Paulo — Brazil's biggest electoral prize — backed Bolsonaro. The count swung as the night went on: early returns favoured Bolsonaro, then Lula pulled ahead as the Northeast reported, and the lead widened steadily to nearly 4.4 million votes.

The two-hour extension that stopped the count

The night was overshadowed by a legal storm. Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin — who was formerly Lula's personal lawyer — ordered voting extended by two hours, until 19:00 Brasília time, after Lula's campaign complained of public-transport restrictions in three cities in the state of Bahia.

The decision landed right at the 17:00 closing time, creating confusion as some polling stations had already shut. The TSE paused the count for two hours while the ruling was clarified: stations that had already closed stayed shut, while those still open could keep receiving voters. Bolsonaro's camp raised concerns about voting conditions in municipalities hit by heavy rain, and the extraordinary timing of the decision fuelled accusations from his supporters online.

What the result means

A fourth term for Lula is a bulwark against Washington's influence in the region. His government has pushed back against US trade and security policies, and during the campaign Lula warned that the Trump administration would try to tilt the race. "They will try to interfere here. They will try to help the other side win the elections," he said.

A victory for Bolsonaro, 45, would have extended a wave of right-wing victories for Latin American candidates friendly to US President Donald Trump. Instead, the Workers' Party president — who first governed Brazil from 2003 to 2010 and returned to office in 2023 — will now lead the country into 2027 with a Congress tilted further to the right than the one he faced in his last term.

The TSE has yet to formally certify the final result, and reactions from Bolsonaro's camp and from Washington are still awaited. But the numbers are in: 158.7 million Brazilians were eligible to vote, and by more than four million votes, they chose Lula.

Reporting based on the TSE official count via Votendi, Folha de S.Paulo/Datafolha and Reuters.