SÃO PAULO—For months, Brazilian President
Jair Bolsonaro
had argued that the unfavorable opinion polls ahead of Brazil’s presidential vote Sunday were wrong. He was right.
The right-wing ex-army captain secured 43.2% of the vote in the first round of presidential elections, more than 51 million votes and almost 10 percentage points more than some polls had predicted. He still fell short of his rival, leftist former President
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva,
who got 48.4%, which triggers a runoff vote at the end of October.
Now, Brazil’s presidential election, considered only days ago by pollsters and many analysts to be a shoo-in for Mr. da Silva, is up for grabs, political scientists said on Monday.
“By the grace of God, I’ve never lost an election and I know I won’t lose this one,” said Mr. Bolsonaro in a triumphant message to supporters on social media Monday. “We won against the lying pollsters and now we will win the election.”
While Mr. da Silva is still a slight favorite to win, the chance of Mr. Bolsonaro clinching a second term can’t be disregarded, said Carlos Melo, a professor of political science at São Paulo’s Insper business school. “The election is wide open,” he said.
After Sunday’s vote among 11 candidates, Messrs. Bolsonaro and da Silva now face a race against time to woo voters and forge alliances with centrist parties before the second round of voting.
Ipec, one of Brazil’s leading polling companies, said that it believed many voters had switched to Mr. Bolsonaro from centrist candidates at the very last minute after its final survey, adding that it was continuously working to improve its methodology. Ipec denied that it had undersampled any particular group in its polls.
The Datafolha firm said it also believed there was a…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at WSJ.com: World News…