The leftist former President, widely known as “Lula,” has gained 50 percent of the votes, with over 98% of the votes counted in a fiercely contested run-off election on Sunday.
It was a tight race, with incumbent Jair Bolsonaro being denied a second term, CNN reports.
The two candidates had previously gone head to head in a first round of voting on October 2, but neither gained more than half of the votes, forcing Sunday’s runoff vote, which has become a referendum on two starkly different visions for Brazil.
Lula had 50.8% of votes compared with 49.2% for Bolsonaro with 99.1% of voting machines counted, which the Supreme Electoral Court said was enough to “mathematically define” the outcome of the race.
Reuters described today’s results as a rebuke for the fiery far-right populism of Bolsonaro, who emerged from the back benches of Congress to forge a novel conservative coalition but lost support as Brazil ran up one of the worst death tolls of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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