BRASÍLIA, Oct 6 — Brazil’s Flavio Bolsonaro heads to a runoff election buoyed by sweeping gains in Congress, after a shock first-place poll finish hailed by US President Donald Trump as a “big victory”.
The right-wing senator finished two percentage points ahead of leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who faces an uphill battle to secure a fourth term win on October 25, and cement his legacy.
The 45-year-old Bolsonaro, who was little known until a few months ago, outperformed the first-round election results of his father, the far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro in 2018 and 2022 elections.
The result pushed the Sao Paulo stock market up almost nine percent at midday, as the Ibovespa index reached an all-time high of almost 210,000.
