Brazil president Jair Bolsonaro is leading his leftist rival Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil’s presidential runoff election by a narrowing margin as almost 50% of the votes were counted.
Jair Bolsonaro has 50.3% to Lula’s 49.7%, the electoral court said. In the first round, the incumbent was ahead until about 70% of the ballots were tallied even though Lula ended up winning with 48% of the vote to 43% for Jair Bolsonaro.
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Polls on the eve of the election had predicted that Jair Bolsonaro was trailing Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, by a margin of four to eight percentage points. Lula won the first round of voting by about 6 million votes but fell short of overall majority that would have guaranteed him an outright win.