Lula defeats Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil's nail-biting presidential runoff election

Brazil Election 2022: Lula defeats Jair Bolsonaro in nail-biting final round.

Jair Bolsonaro who was seeking re-election after becoming president of Brazil in January 2019 was defeated by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the runoff on Monday, Brazil's election body said.

Brazil Election 2022: Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. (Reuters)

With 98.8% of the votes tallied, Lula had 50.8% while Jair Bolsonaro had 49.2%. The election authority said Lula's victory was a mathematical certainty. Through the first half of the count, Jair Bolsonaro had been leading but Lula overtook him after almost 60% of the votes were tallied.

Lula had failed to win an outright majority in the first round, winning by 6 million votes. In the first round of voting, Lula gained 48.43% of votes to Jair Bolsonaro’s 43.20%.

In May this year, Lula who first sought the presidency in 1989, announced his sixth presidential run, vowing to beat Jair Bolsonaro by staging “the greatest peaceful revolution the world has ever seen”.

As Lula voted in the morning, he had said, “Today we are choosing the kind of Brazil we want, how we want our society to organize. People will decide what kind of life they want. That’s why this is the most important day of my life. I am convinced that Brazilians will vote for a plan under which democracy wins.”

Political tensions remained high in the run up to the vote, with accusations and misinformation on both sides of the campaign trail.

Jair Bolsonaro has earlier described the voting system as fraud-prone which has raised concerns that he may not concede defeat, like former US president Donald Trump.