Brazil’s presidential runoff began on Sunday at 8 a.m. local time, with a tight contest between the candidates. In this stage of the race, incumbent President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva faced Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of the former president, in a bid to win the presidency.<\/p>\n
The first round of voting was held on Oct. 4, when Flavio Bolsonaro led with about 47% of the vote against Lula’s 45%, but neither secured an absolute majority. Polls ahead of the runoff indicated a very close contest between the two candidates, within the margin of error.<\/p>\n
The main issues in the election include the rising cost of living, public insecurity and concerns over corruption in the country. Lula, who served as president from 2003 to 2010, returned to power after defeating his former rival Jair Bolsonaro in the previous election and is now seeking a fourth non-consecutive term.<\/p>\n
Flavio Bolsonaro is trying to preserve the strong political base of the right after his father was barred from public office and convicted over involvement in a military coup plot. A possible victory for him could bring a return of conservative rule in Brazil and lead to closer alignment with right-wing leaders in the region and the United States.<\/p>\n
More than 150 million eligible voters across Brazil’s 26 states and federal district are taking part in the election electronically, and initial results are expected shortly after voting ends at 5 p.m. Brasilia time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Brazil’s presidential runoff begins as Lula faces Flavio Bolsonaro in a tight race over the economy, security and corruption.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24721,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}