Brazil runoff live updates: ballot count resumes after two-hour voting extension

Meanwhile, hundreds of Lula supporters have camped out on Paulista Avenue to watch the vote count, which started at 7pm local time.

Among them is Camilo Buarque, 35, who came with a bright red banner reading: “Lula: My President”.

“I feel so very happy being here and being here fighting for Lula,” Buarque says, predicting his leader will beat Bolsonaro.

“My confidence comes from the energy and the happiness and the love of these people [around me]. This is democracy,” Buarque says as the first results come in, giving Lula the lead. Fireworks exploded in the air above him as the crowd celebrated the early lead.

João Felipe, a 27-year-old logistics worker, is also there waiting for what he hopes will be a huge Lula party.

“I’ve always been poor and Lula was a very important person when it came to helping people improve their lives,” he says.

“Lula is going to turn this election around. Long live democracy,” Felipe predicts.

“My heart is beating a thousand beats a second but I’m confident,” said his partner, Ester Almeida, 28.

Flávio Bolsonaro is following the count from the mansion of one of his campaign coordinators in a wealthy area of the capital, Brasília. The dozens of journalists present are being kept separate from Bolsonaro and allied politicians, but from time to time they can hear bursts of celebration – like after a goal – whenever the count is updated and Bolsonaro narrows the gap with Lula.

When, with 13.65% of the vote counted, Flávio moved just slightly ahead with 50.01%, an AI-generated funk track began playing loudly and the senator’s guests started chanting a line commonly heard in Brazilian football stadiums: “Go at him, Flávio.”

And just like that, the race is already tightening further. Bolsonaro now has 50.01% of the vote, while Lula has 49.99% of the vote with just over 13.5% of ballots counted.

With 5% of votes counted Lula has taken an early lead with 51% of votes to Bolsonaro’s 48.87%. This is going to be a tight race and a very long night.

One of the most popular figures in Flávio Bolsonaro’s party, congressman Nikolas Ferreira, indicated that the far right could use the extension of voting hours as grounds to challenge the election result in the event of a victory by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Speaking to journalists outside the mansion in Brasília where Bolsonaro was due to follow the count, Ferreira said that “the only person harmed” by the extension was the senator – without, however, mentioning the voters who, as reports throughout the day showed, had been unable to vote because they had no transport.

“The extension only helps whoever is losing,” said the 30-year-old politician who, in the first round, became the most-voted federal congressman in Brazilian history, with 3.1 million votes. He added that justice Cristiano Zanin “wanted to disrupt the election” by issuing the ruling.

Bolsonaro’s campaign chief, senator Rogério Marinho, echoed that line and called the justice’s ruling an “intervention”.

“I sincerely hope common sense prevails and that any judicial coup or administrative manoeuvre does not succeed, for the sake of democracy,” he posted on social media.

Now two hours after the initial extension, polls have officially closed in Brazil (save for another surprise extension). Ballot count has begun.

Although voting time was extended across the country, some polling stations had already closed by the time that decision was announced. As Brazil uses electronic voting machines, once they are closed, they cannot be re-opened.

It’s not clear if certain polling stations had restrictions on if people who arrived after the initial deadline were allowed to vote, as rules usually stipulate that only people in line can still vote after the polls close.

The fact that ballot counting was already underway when the polls were suddenly ordered to remain open has led to some confusion and concerns about the integrity of the election results.

Five days after his defeat in the first round of the Brazilian presidential election, leftwing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva spent almost 24 hours unable to boost his Instagram posts, while his opponent, far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro, could.

Lula’s lawyers included the episode in a list of incidents that they submitted to the electoral court and international observers as “evidence” that Meta, Instagram’s owner, was actively trying to interfere in Brazil’s election in Bolsonaro’s favour.

Reports from Lula supporters saying their content had been removed or its reach restricted flooded social media in Brazil, while about a dozen watchdogs and research groups published reports describing what they called “indications” that Meta may have favoured the senator’s campaign.

Meta called Lula’s allegations “false and unfounded”, saying there had been “technical incidents” that affected campaigns from “different parts of the political spectrum”.

The controversy fuelled the electoral battle between Lula and Bolsonaro and gained further traction after the electoral court ordered Meta not to give the candidates “unequal treatment”.

Lula supporters are starting to gather on Paulista Avenue, at the heart of São Paulo, in anticipation of a Lula victory.

The mood is upbeat but tense, amid suspicions that there has been a deliberate pro-Bolsonaro campaign to sabotage public transport systems to stop Lula voters reaching polling stations across the country.

Many people on Paulista Avenue outside the iconic São Paulo Museum of Art suspect foul play from Bolsonaro-supporting politicians and business people.

“I think it’s another coup attempt that the extreme right is trying in Brazil. But we need to really fight so we can win,” said Lucas Lopes, a 32-year-old from São Paulo who works with public relations.

“I’m really worried but I’m optimistic,” Lopes added as dozens of Lula supporters blocked the roads and danced with banners and flags.

“It’s a coup,” agreed Caio Marques, a 40-year-old photographer from Franca, a city in the interior of São Paulo state. “Their arrogance is such that they think they have already won and can do whatever they please and won’t be punished.”

Marques’s partner, Gabriela Leôncio, said: “They are [stopping] public transport in strategic places where Lula has historically had more votes. Where Lula has an advantage, people haven’t managed to get to their polling stations ... They are trying several different types of coup.”

Marques predicted the ploy would fail. “I have faith it won’t [work] because the left is really mobilized,” he said. “I’ll be sincere: in the first round the left failed. But in the second round they woke up ... and there is no coup that will take this away from us.”

Earlier this month, Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, led a rally in São Paulo, as he aims to be re-elected to a fourth presidential term, and faces serious opposition from rightwinger Flávio Bolsonaro. Taking the mic before a crowd on Avenida Paulista that organisers put at more than a million, the former union leader began: “I’m not sure whether to open this speech with ‘comrades’ or ‘fandoms from all over Brazil’.” The rally was organised by Lula’s Workers’ party (PT) and a string of other leftwing groups – but the spark came from pop music fandoms.

More than 600 Brazilian fanbase groups for Billie Eilish, Lady Gaga, Katseye, Demi Lovato, Harry Styles, Katy Perry, Selena Gomez, as well as Brazilian stars such as Anitta, Marina Sena and Ludmilla among others, all came together to back Lula, waging an intense online campaign as soon as Lula’s rival, son of imprisoned former president Jair Bolsonaro, came out on top in the first round on 4 October.

When the first round results came in, “I had this feeling I’d seen it all before with Jair Bolsonaro, and that was really frustrating,” says V, an Eilish fan who helps run Info Billie Brasil, one of the country’s biggest fan communities dedicated to the US singer. “So my first reaction was to use the only communication tool we have and get our community to embrace the cause: Lula’s re-election.”

The local electoral court ordered the immediate restoration of 100% of the bus fleet and ordered the arrest of the municipal transport secretary, Pablo Souza, on suspicion of an electoral offence and disobeying court orders. The arrest warrant could not be carried out, however, because he is in Paris on what the city government described as an “official mission”, and is not expected to return to Brazil until Monday.

Late in the afternoon, Flávio Bolsonaro also filed requests for voting to be extended by two hours in cities in the states of São Paulo, Paraná and Santa Catarina, but because of heavy rain that he said had prevented voters from turning out.

Brazilian TV crews at polling stations documented confusion among election workers who were unsure what to do because the ruling came a few minutes after the scheduled close. In some cases, electronic voting machines had already issued their final reports, preventing further votes. Others, however, had not yet closed and voting continued.

The electoral court had begun publishing results on its website, but later said that, following the supreme court’s ruling, it had suspended the count with 0.25% of votes tallied, Lula on 57.66% and Bolsonaro on 42.34%. Counting and publication of results are now expected to resume only after 7pm.

Lula had sought the voting time extension on the grounds that, in cities across nine Brazilian states, voters were being prevented from casting their ballots because local authorities aligned with Flávio Bolsonaro were failing to provide the free public transport required by law on election day.

The incumbent had first made the request to the electoral court, which is presided over by justice Kássio Nunes Marques, an appointee of former president Jair Bolsonaro who has faced criticism over alleged bias in favour of senator Flávio Bolsonaro in electoral disputes.

Marques had not ruled on the request by the scheduled 5pm end of voting and, minutes later, Zanin granted the extension across the entire country.

The transport problems were reported by several Brazilian media outlets.

In São Paulo, Latin America’s largest city, which has 9 million voters and whose mayor is a staunch Bolsonaro supporter, Lula’s campaign told the electoral court that only 60% of buses were running – although Lula lost nationally to Bolsonaro in the first round, the incumbent won in São Paulo by 46.58% to 42.13%.

Many polls and detailed voting results show that Lula has stronger support among lower-income workers who rely most on public transport on election day.

On Sunday afternoon, Lula said that “something abominable is happening”.

“No one can give up on voting because some crooked businessman or some dishonest, criminal mayor tried to stop people from voting ... What we want is this: an election that is held, an honest election, with everyone having the right to vote, and everyone accepting the result.”

Lula compared the situation with the 2022 election, when the federal highway police under then president Jair Bolsonaro carried out roadblocks that, supreme court justices later concluded during the attempted coup trial, were intended to prevent leftist voters from casting their ballots. The force’s then director was sentenced to 24 years in prison.

In Salvador, the capital of Bahia state, also governed by a Bolsonaro supporter, which has 2 million voters and where Lula also won in the first round, Lula’s campaign said only 50% of buses were running.

Scratch that. Brazilian ⁠supreme court justice Cristiano Zanin ⁠has just ordered ⁠voting ​in the country’s presidential runoff ⁠on Sunday to be ⁠extended by ​two ‌hours, granting a ‌request from ‌Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s campaign.

Polls were initially set ‌to close at 5pm ​Brasília time. Lula’s campaign ⁠alleged that authorities ​in several cities ​were ​restricting voter ​access ‌to ​public ​transportation.

The decision follows allegations of attempted voter suppression in at least 10 states, where public transport appears to have been severely limited in what some suspect was a deliberate ploy to stop Lula voters reaching polling stations.

Earlier, Lula told reporters he had never before complained about elections he had been involved in, irrespective of whether he had won or lost. “But this time something abominable is happening.”

However, some polling stations may have already closed since the decision came so shortly after they were due to close. People should now be able to vote until 7pm.

As the clock strikes 5pm in Brazil’s capital Brasília, polls have officially closed, though it is unclear whether either candidate’s request for voting hours to be extended in some cities will be granted.

With only a few minutes left before poll closing time, both presidential candidates are asking Brazil’s electoral court to extend voting hours in some cities. The request from president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva came after issues in nine states with buses that provide transportation to polls. Flávio Bolsonaro’s is due to heavy rains in the nation’s south. Polls were expected to close nationwide at 5pm.

Kássio Nunes Marques, the Brazilian supreme court justice who also heads the country’s electoral court, told reporters in capital Brasilia that some cities are indeed experiencing bus shortages, but did not answer whether the voting hours will be extended, according to the AP. He did not address Bolsonaro’s request in his comments.

Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said that many people had been “barred from voting” after buses were taken out of circulation in São Paulo and several other cities.

“We are asking the supreme court to extend the electoral process so that those who were effectively barred from voting, due to the dirty tactics of mayors, can still cast their votes,” said Lula.

Lula said 40% of buses were pulled from service in São Paulo, a problem also taking place in several cities in his native north-eastern Brazil.

To Flávio Bolsonaro and his publicists, it must have seemed an ingenious idea that would expose his rival’s supposed crookedness on the eve of Brazil’s presidential election.

But the far-right politician’s decision to attend a primetime television debate against his leftwing opponent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, with the word “corrupto” (corrupt) written on the palm of his hand has backfired.

Rather than drawing attention to the incumbent’s alleged misdeeds, many of the programme’s millions of viewers sarcastically took Bolsonaro’s handwritten message as an admission of his own guilt.

Marina Silva, the former Brazilian environment minister, has said that if Flávio Bolsonaro becomes president he will seek to finish the “perverse project” of rampant rainforest destruction initiated by his jailed far-right father.

The Amazon was thrown into chaos during Jair Bolsonaro’s 2019-2022 presidency, when Brazil’s environment and Indigenous protection agencies were gutted and environmental criminals ran riot, causing surges in deforestation and violence.

Silva, a world-renowned environmentalist who was Lula’s environment minister until April, says a second Bolsonaro presidency will spell disaster for the globally crucial ecosystem, for its inhabitants and for the climate crisis.

“I’ve no doubt that this time they will try to finish the perverse project they started with [Jair] Bolsonaro. If they are elected – and God, and the Brazilian people, willing they won’t be – they will use their time to try to speed up as much as possible all of the regressions they can, including to keep themselves in power,” says Silva.

“The vision they have for the Amazon is the same vision they have for everything. They are denialists. Their vision is that the forest must be removed for economic activities,” she adds. “They will again encourage illegal mining, the invasion of Indigenous lands, and violence against Indigenous and Quilombola communities.”

Thundering to a crowd of thousands of far-right supporters in São Paulo on 7 September, Brazil’s Independence Day, the senator Flávio Bolsonaro focused less on his opponent in the presidential election, the leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, than on someone who is not running at all.

“Whoever votes for Lula is voting for Alexandre de Moraes,” Bolsonaro shouted, referring to the shaven-headed supreme court justice once described as “Voldemort” by Elon Musk.

Although Lula did not appoint Moraes to the court, Bolsonaro’s supporters have linked the two men ever since the judge oversaw the case in which the senator’s father, the former president Jair Bolsonaro, was sentenced to 27 years in prison for attempting a coup.

Just days before the election runoff, Moraes was once again at the centre of a presidential scandal – one that Lula believes may have helped Flávio Bolsonaro overtake him to emerge as the frontrunner. The justice once hailed as democracy’s “saviour” for containing Jair Bolsonaro may now have helped pave the way for the family’s return to power.

The scandal began with a police investigation, which found that Moraes’s wife’s law firm had a contract worth about £20m with Daniel Vorcaro, the banker accused of orchestrating Brazil’s largest banking fraud. Text messages also emerged suggesting a close relationship between Moraes and Vorcaro, though the judge denies the messages are authentic.

Investigations subsequently revealed that at least four other justices had links to the disgraced banker, meaning half of the court’s 10 current justices have been drawn into the scandal.

Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the Brazilian presidential runoff.

Leftwing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and senator Flávio Bolsonaro faced a second round of voting after neither secured more than 50% of the vote in the first round.

Bolsonaro, the eldest son of disgraced ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, pulled off a surprise first-round victory, signaling a resurgence of the far-right in Brazil. But polls appeared to have narrowed a few days before Sunday’s vote, with a Quaest poll reported by Reuters showing Bolsonaro on 45% of the vote, with Lula on 44%. A week earlier, Bolsonaro had 46% of the vote, compared with Lula’s 44%.

In the first-round election earlier this month, Bolsonaro secured 47% of the vote, compared with Lula’s 45%.

Sunday’s election is a test for incumbent president Lula: can he can rally enough support to overturn Bolsonaro’s lead?