BRASILIA
Deeply divided Brazil will hold a deciding vote in four weeks’ time after far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro performed more strongly than expected in Sunday’s presidential poll.
With 99.8 percent of voting machines counted, left-wing challenger Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva had 48.4 percent of valid votes, compared with 43.3 percent for Bolsonaro, according to the Superior Electoral Tribunal.
The second-round vote, extending what has been a tense and violent campaign by an additional four weeks, will take place on October 30.
On Sunday, there were long queues at polling stations that closed at 5pm local time (20:00 GMT).
About 156 million people were eligible to vote.
Da Silva, popularly known as Lula, went into election day the frontrunner, with recent opinion polls giving him a commanding lead and even a first-round victory. The strength of Bolsonaro’s support and the much tighter result dashed expectations of a quick resolution to the deep polarisation in the world’s fourth-largest democracy.
“He clearly outperformed, and that’s a big surprise, ” Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Council of the Americas told Al Jazeera. “The polls proved to be incorrect in Brazil.”
Bolsonaro had questioned polls that showed him losing to Lula in the first round, saying they did not capture the enthusiasm he saw on the campaign trail. The 67-year-old former army captain hailed the result as a win.
“We beat the lie today,” he told reporters, referring to the pre-vote polls.
“Now the campaign is ours… I’m completely confident. We have a lot of positive accomplishments to show.”
