Turnout: 78.70%
About this election
The Brazilian presidential election of 2018 brought the far-right outsider Jair Bolsonaro to power and marked a historic rupture in the country's politics. A former army captain and seven-term congressman known for inflammatory remarks, Bolsonaro channelled a wave of anger over corruption, a deep recession and rising crime into a decisive victory over the Workers' Party (PT), winning the run-off on 28 October 2018 with 55.13% of the valid vote. His election ended the alternation between the PT and the centrist PSDB that had defined every presidential contest since 1994.
Brazil's president and vice-president are elected as a joint ticket by the two-round system. A candidate winning more than half of the valid votes (excluding blanks and spoilt ballots) in the first round is elected outright; otherwise the top two advance to a run-off three weeks later. Voting is compulsory for literate citizens aged 18 to 70 and is conducted entirely on electronic voting machines, which deliver a near-complete national count within hours. The president serves a four-year term and may be re-elected once consecutively. The same day, voters also choose the Chamber of Deputies, a third (or two-thirds) of the Senate, and state governors and assemblies.
The campaign unfolded amid the fallout from Operation Car Wash (Lava Jato), the sprawling corruption investigation that had jailed business and political elites. The PT's most popular figure, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, led the polls but was barred from running after a corruption conviction and imprisoned; he was replaced late by the former São Paulo mayor Fernando Haddad. In September Bolsonaro was stabbed and nearly killed at a rally, an attack that kept him off the campaign trail but boosted his profile. He ran a social-media-driven, anti-establishment campaign promising to crush crime, loosen gun laws and end PT "communism".
In the first round on 7 October, Bolsonaro took 46.03% to Haddad's 29.28%, with Ciro Gomes (PDT) third on 12.47%. In the run-off Bolsonaro won 57.8 million votes (55.13%) to Haddad's 47.0 million (44.87%). He carried 16 of the 27 federal units, sweeping the wealthier and more populous South, South-East and Centre-West; Haddad won the nine states of the poorer North-East plus Pará and Tocantins, laying bare a stark regional and class divide that would define Brazilian politics for years.
Inaugurated on 1 January 2019, Bolsonaro governed as a disruptive nationalist, pursuing economic liberalisation under his minister Paulo Guedes, loosening environmental protection in the Amazon and aligning with Donald Trump. His handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, which he repeatedly downplayed, drew intense criticism. The deep polarisation crystallised in 2018 set the stage for an extraordinarily close rematch against a freed and politically rehabilitated Lula in 2022.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.