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BRASIL Flávio Bolsonaro leads Brazil’s first round and will face Lula in the runoff
The PL candidate won 47.03% of valid votes and finished more than 2.2 million ballots ahead of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. According to O Globo, two states that backed the PT in 2022 switched sides in 2026.
Flávio Bolsonaro of the Liberal Party finished first in Brazil’s presidential first round with 56,104,503 votes, equal to 47.03% of valid ballots. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the PT came second with 53,879,538 votes, or 45.16%.
The gap between them was 2,227,651 votes, and the two will move on to the September 25 runoff. O Globo reported that, unlike in 2022, the first-round lead this time went to the Bolsonaro camp.
According to the newspaper, Flávio Bolsonaro was the top vote-getter in 14 states and in the Federal District, while Lula led in 12 states. Compared with the 2022 race, Minas Gerais and Tocantins shifted from Lula to Flávio Bolsonaro.
O Globo said the biggest change in absolute numbers came in Minas Gerais. In 2022, Lula had won 5,802,571 votes there against 5,239,264 for Jair Bolsonaro. In 2026, Lula fell to 5,188,936 votes, or 43.33%, while Flávio Bolsonaro reached 5,777,548, or 48.24%, flipping the result.
In Tocantins, still according to O Globo, Lula went from 434,303 votes in 2022 to 404,009 in 2026, while the Bolsonaro camp rose from 379,194 votes with Jair Bolsonaro to 469,321 with Flávio Bolsonaro, also reversing the outcome.
One of O Globo’s texts includes a different total for Flávio Bolsonaro’s vote count, listing 56,104,268 votes, while the rest of the material from the same outlet reports 56,104,503.
Sources
About this piece. Written by El Notero with AI assistance, from reporting published by the outlet cited above. El Notero did no original reporting on this story.
