Sharjah24 – AFP: Brazilians voted Sunday in a polarizing presidential election leftist front-runner Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva hopes to win in a single round amid fears far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro will not accept a defeat.
Polls opened at 8:00 am (1100 GMT) for eight hours of balloting with an early trickle of voters dutifully decked out in the red colors of Lula's Workers' Party, or the green-and-yellow of Brazil's national flag that Bolsonaro has claimed as his own.
The campaign has left the Latin American giant deeply divided, with former president Lula (2003-2010) leading ex-army captain Bolsonaro with 50 percent of valid votes to 36 percent, according to a final poll from the Datafolha institute released Saturday evening.
The figures put Lula within arm's reach of the score needed to win outright and avoid a runoff on October 30: half the valid votes, plus one.
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