Far-right candidate will have to top poll in second-round run-off to secure presidency

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The far-right Brazilian populist Jair Bolsonaro has secured a resounding victory in the first-round of his country’s presidential election, but fallen just short of the majority required to avoid a second-round runoff.

Profile Who is Jair Bolsonaro? Show Hide Biography Born in Glicério in São Paulo in 1955 to parents of Italian descent, he served in the army from 1971 until 1988, when he was elected as a city councillor in Rio de Janeiro for the Christian Democratic party. In 1990, he became a federal congressman for the same party. He has since been affiliated with a number of political parties. On 22 July, he was officially nominated as the presidential candidate of the Social Liberal party. Policies Bolsonaro espouses populist and nationalist views that often stray into far-right territory. A vocal opponent of same-sex marriage, abortion, immigration and other progressive causes, he has defended the death penalty and the 1964-85 military dictatorship. On foreign policy, he has said he wants to improve relations with the US. Economically he says he is pro free market and privatisation. Political style Deliberately provocative and polarising. He has praised Gen Pinochet, expressed support for torturers and called for political opponents to be shot, earning him the label of "the most misogynistic, hateful elected official in the democratic world”. In his bid to capitalise on Latin America’s lurch to the right, he paints himself as a tropical Donald Trump: a pro-gun, anti-establishment crusader set on "draining the swamp" and cracking down on violent crime. Controversies On top of repeated calls for a return to dictatorship, he has made equally inflammatory attacks on women, black people, gay people, foreigners and indigenous communities. Earlier this year, he was charged by the attorney general with inciting hate speech. Support and first round victory Bolsonaro has a devout following among some conservative voters, who admire his promises to get tough on rampant violent crime, and won 46% of the vote in the election's first round. Photograph: Evaristo Sa/AFP

After a campaign as improbable and electrifying as any Brazilian telenovela – although infinitely more consequential for the future of one of the world’s largest and most diverse democracies – Bolsonaro secured 46.93% of votes - with 94% of all votes counted.

The second-placed candidate, the leftist Workers’ party Fernando Haddad, won 28% of the vote, according to Brazil’s superior electoral court, the TSE. Behind him came the Democratic Labor party’s Ciro Gomes with 12.5%.

Those results mean Bolsonaro, who received more than 46m votes, and Haddad will face off for the presidency on 28 October in a second-round vote.

“The next few weeks are just going to be crazy. The country is just going to divide even more,” predicted Monica de Bolle, the director of Latin American Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

“It’s going to be a horrible campaign in the second round. It’s going to be one side smearing the other. Bolsonaro is going to be coming out with all the dirt on the PT [Workers’ party] – and there’s plenty of that. And the PT is going to be coming out with a lot of dirt on Bolsonaro – and there’s plenty of that too.”

In Brazil, only the grandest of coalitions can now defeat Bolsonaro Read more

Jubilant Bolsonaro followers gathered outside his beachside home in western Rio de Janeiro on Sunday evening to celebrate the result with fireworks and a barbecue.

Many of those present wore T-shirts emblazoned with Bolsonaro’s image and the slogan “É melhor Jair acostumando!” – a play on the politician’s name that roughly translates as: “You’d Bolso get used to it!”

Jean Sartorial, a 33-year-old banker who had come to the party in a blue Brazil football jersey, said: “Jair Bolsonaro is hope for the Brazilian people.”

Thiago Xavier, a 30-year-old estate agent, agreed: “Bolsonaro is a legend.”

There was frustration and defiance as it began to sink in that Bolsonaro would fall just short of a first-round victory.

“Damn, 48%!” said Washington Silva, 66, a retired air force colonel. “The second round will be fiercer,” Silva added. “More aggression.”

Brian Winter, the editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly, said the colossal support for Bolsonaro in much of the country meant he was a huge favourite to beat Haddad.

“The path for Haddad to close that gap looks almost impossible,” he said. “This idea that Bolsonaro can save the country and make it safe for people to walk on the streets at night and tend the corruption in Brasília and make a dent in 13m unemployed – that’s an idea most Brazilians now seem to have bought.”

In a broadcast on the eve of the election, Bolsonaro, the 63-year-old candidate of the Social Liberal party echoed Donald Trump with a call to his 7 million Facebook followers: “Let’s make Brazil great! Let’s be proud of our homeland once again!”

Throughout his 27-year career as a congressman, Bolsonaro has been notorious for throwing vitriol at Brazil’s black, gay and indigenous communities, as well as his support for military rule.

Brazil elections: prospect of Bolsonaro victory stokes fears of return to dictatorship Read more

“Yes, I’m in favor of a dictatorship! We will never resolve grave national problems with this irresponsible democracy,” the politician, who has been described as a blend of Hugo Chávez and Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, told Congress in 1993.

In a 2015 interview, Bolsonaro defended the dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985 – responsible for killing and disappearing hundreds of opponents – as a benevolent but essential means of preventing “the ‘communisation’ of our country.”

“You had complete freedom to come and go and do whatever you wanted to do in our country [back then]. It was an era of employment, security, respect, education,” he claimed.

Last month, Bolsonaro called for his leftwing political opponents to be shot. Two days later he himself was stabbed in an attempted assassination at a rally.

Play Video 0:12 Brazilian far-right presidential candidate stabbed at campaign event - video

But in the final days of the campaign, the far-right frontrunner, forced to campaign from a hospital bed, tried to recast himself as a paragon of tolerance who would rule for all Brazil’s 208 million citizens regardless of their skin colour or faith.

“We will govern for everyone, even the atheists,” he insisted in one pre-election broadcast. “Let’s change Brazil together.”

Progressive Brazilians, sickened by the rise of a pro-torture politician whose supporters and close relatives have a penchant for wearing clothes emblazoned with images of assault rifles and handguns, are not convinced.

Casting her vote at a school in Rio’s Santa Teresa neighbourhood on Sunday, Soraya de Souza, a 56-year-old lawyer, said Brazil faced a stark choice: “It is democracy or fascism.”

The historian Heloísa Starling said she was particularly perturbed by Bolsonaro’s authoritarian tendencies and his plans to relax gun laws: “If he really does follow through on allowing the population to arm itself, this country will become a wild west.”

“It’ll be even worse than that wretch in the United States,” said Cico Bezerra da Sivla, a 56-year-old butcher from Garanhuns, the north-eastern town where Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – president from 2003 to 2011 – was born. “He just wants to kill people. The only thing he likes is guns.”