Flávio Bolsonaro and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will face each other in Brazil’s presidential runoff on October 25 after neither candidate secured an outright majority in the first round.

A right-leaning account framed the result chiefly as a Bolsonaro advantage. With 98.72% of ballots counted, it reported Bolsonaro on 47.24% and Lula on 44.91%, describing the contest as a close race that had nevertheless put the senator ahead. It also placed writer Augusto Cury third, with 2.90% of the vote.¹

That perspective was echoed in a social-media post by commentator Rodrigo Constantino, which referred to a message congratulating Flávio Bolsonaro on his “victory in the first round.”Rodrigo Constantino (Rconstantino)² The official count described in the articles, however, indicates that the first round did not decide the presidency because neither leading candidate passed the threshold for victory.

A left-leaning account reported a similarly narrow Bolsonaro lead while stressing the electoral arithmetic still facing both campaigns. At 98.20% counted, it put Bolsonaro at 47.33%, or 55.4 million votes, against Lula’s 44.81%, or 52.5 million — a gap of roughly 2.95 million votes. “Neither candidate reached the absolute majority of valid votes needed to end the contest in the first round,” it said.³

The two accounts therefore agree on the central facts: Bolsonaro finished the partial count in front, Lula remained within reach, and voting will resume from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Brasília time on October 25. Their differing emphasis points to the runoff’s central question: whether Bolsonaro can protect his initial edge, or whether Lula can draw enough support from eliminated candidates and the more than 32 million voters who abstained in the first round.³