By Ricardo Brito, Luciana Magalhaes and Pedro Fonseca
BRASILIA/SAO PAULO, Oct 25 (Reuters) – Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva overtook right-wing Senator Flavio Bolsonaro in Sunday’s runoff, with half of votes counted and ballots from left-leaning states in Lula’s northeastern stronghold starting to pour in.
Pollsters said higher-than-expected turnout appeared to have boosted Lula. Andrei Roman, CEO of pollster AtlasIntel, told Reuters that Lula would be re-elected.
The federal electoral court has yet to call a victor, but Lula allies were already claiming victory on social media.
Brazil’s conservative candidates typically perform well early in the count, with leftists’ performance improving as votes from poorer, populous states in the northeast start arriving later.
Lula started strongly, and although Bolsonaro overtook him, Lula snapped back with around 50% of votes counted by 8:30 p.m. in Brasilia (2330 GMT).
(Reporting by Oliver Griffin, Luciana Magalhaes and Lisandra Paraguassu in Sao Paulo; Ricardo Brito, Bernardo Caram and Brendan O’Boyle in Brasilia; Marta Nogueira in Rio de Janeiro, Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington; Writing by Brendan O’Boyle and Oliver Griffin; Editing by Alistair Bell, Christina Fincher, Andrew Heavens, Nick Zieminski and Aurora Ellis)
Disclaimer: This report is auto generated from the Reuters news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.