Lula and Bolsonaro head to Brazil’s presidential runoff

President Lula da Silva and Senator Flávio Bolsonaro will meet in an Oct. 25 runoff after Sunday's first round left neither above the 50 percent threshold, with Bolsonaro at 47.07 percent to Lula's 45.12 percent on nearly complete counting. Bolsonaro's father, the former president, is serving a 27-year sentence for attempting a coup and named his son his preferred candidate late last year.

Bolsonaro's Liberal Party also picked up at least 18 Senate seats and five governorships, including São Paulo's Tarcísio de Freitas winning reelection outright. Lula's coalition has asked the electoral court to investigate possible U.S. interference benefiting Bolsonaro, a case that could theoretically remove him from office if he wins.

The court's chief justice reported the vote proceeded smoothly aside from swapping out about 0.2 percent of voting machines, and found no concrete evidence of foreign meddling. Both camps now have three weeks to chase the roughly 33 million people who stayed home and the voters whose first-round picks got eliminated.

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