Brazilian voters dealt President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva a bruising defeat on Sunday, as right-wing Senator Flávio Bolsonaro finished first in the country's presidential election and forced a runoff. The result defied nearly every opinion poll and put Latin America's largest nation within reach of a rightward shift in power.

With nearly all ballots counted on Sunday night, Flávio Bolsonaro held about 47 percent of the vote to Lula's 45 percent, according to Brazil's Superior Electoral Court. Neither candidate reached the 50 percent threshold required to win outright, so the two will face each other again in a second round on October 25.

The outcome was a major polling miss. On the eve of the vote, the leading Datafolha poll had put Lula ahead at 45 percent against 42 percent for Bolsonaro. Voters punished the leftist incumbent instead, in a result that underscored the depth of right-wing sentiment in a country wrestling with violent street crime, rising taxes, and voter fatigue.

Flávio Bolsonaro, 45, is a senator and the eldest son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is serving a 27-year sentence under house arrest after being convicted last year of plotting to overturn his narrow 2022 defeat by Lula. The elder Bolsonaro anointed his son as his political heir, and the family's name proved decisive: Lula acknowledged the loss, telling supporters in São Paulo that he had been "convinced I would win in the first round," and pledged a renewed campaign he called "the ultimate test" for the country.

The Bolsonaro family swept victories down the ballot on Sunday. Jair Bolsonaro's wife, Michelle, was elected to the Senate, as was his other son Carlos, while his youngest son, Jair Renan, and his brother Renato won seats in the lower house of Congress. Conservatives also made sweeping gains in the Senate, the Chamber of Deputies, and several governorships, meaning the right would enter the runoff with unusual momentum.

Bolsonaro's backers framed the first-round win as the end of an era. "Brazil has had enough… this is the end of the era of the Workers' Party," Flávio Bolsonaro said of Lula's leftist movement in an elated speech after Sunday's vote. Speaking to supporters in Brasília, he repeated one of his campaign's central proposals: ending presidential reelections. "I only need one term," he said.

The third, fourth, and fifth-place finishers were all right-wing candidates, suggesting Bolsonaro could have a natural pool of voters to draw from in the runoff. That arithmetic is difficult for Lula: analysts note that Brazil has rarely reversed a first-round deficit, and one prominent Brazilian analyst called Bolsonaro "the clear favourite to be Brazil's next president."

The contest has played out under intense international scrutiny. Sunday's vote came after a tense week in which the United States suspended consular services in Brazil and Australia closed its embassy over security threats ahead of election day. Bolsonaro has positioned himself as an ally of President Donald Trump, who has championed a broader rightward swing across Latin America.

Lula, the 80-year-old incumbent, is seeking a fourth nonconsecutive term and has pledged to continue broad social spending while standing up to U.S. pressure. He branded the vote a battle between democracy and "barbarism," warning voters that Brazil's sovereignty was at stake. In deeply polarized voting districts, many voters simply wanted change: a caregiver in Brazil who had long voted for Lula told reporters she switched at the last moment, "just to see what happens, to see if anything changes."

Voting is compulsory for most adults in the world's fifth-largest country, and turnout is typically among the highest in the Americas. The campaign now enters a three-week sprint that will present voters with two starkly different visions — one of a continued leftist project centered on social spending, and one of a modernizing right promising a definitive break with Lula's Workers' Party.