If only expatriate Brazilian voters voted, former president Lula (PT) would have a slightly more comfortable advantage over Jair Bolsonaro (PL), but still not enough to win in the first round, according to the polls conducted outside the country. .
Until 11:11 pm this Sunday (2), with 97.1% of the foreign sections totaled, Lula had 47.4% of the votes away (with 135,900 votes in total) while Bolsonaro appeared with 41.3% (118, 4 thousand).
During the entire race considering only voters abroad, Lula appeared with a comfortable lead over second place as the TSE computed the polls in Europe and Asia, which closed early due to the time difference.
In Lisbon, in the largest electoral college outside Brazil, with 45,200 voters registered to vote, Lula beat Bolsonaro with 61.55% against 30.61%, when 96.5% of the polls had been counted.
In the Portuguese capital there was confusion: employees of the Brazilian embassy who would work as poll workers in Lisbon went on strike, which made the elections start later in some places.
In addition, a Brazilian who identified himself as a Bolsonaro voter circumvented inspections and voted twice, which led to the impeachment of an electronic voting machine and the invalidation of 59 votes. Due to the large flow of voters, the voting time was extended and the polls were open until 20:00 (16:00 GMT).
Lula’s advantage was also large in cities like Paris (77%) and Berlin (79.6%). In Nagoya, Japan, with 35,600 registered voters, Bolsonaro opened wide, with 75.7% of the votes.
Lula’s advantage abroad diminished over the course of the night, when votes from the United States, the region traditionally most fond of Bolsonaro, began to be counted, with 183,000 Brazilians eligible to vote.
In Miami, for example, the largest electoral college in the country, with 40,000 registered voters, Bolsonaro had 74% of the votes, against 16% for Lula, when 89% of the polls had been counted. In the city, a sea of ​​people wearing green and yellow filled the polling place, and lines lasted up to four hours, according to reports from Brazilians. In Boston, at the second largest college, the current president had 69.9%.
Of the largest schools in the United States, only in Washington did the PT lead, with 45.55% of the votes, against 41.65% of the current president. In the capital, queues also took more than an hour in the early afternoon.
Even without being obliged to vote, Heirenice Bond, 73, insisted on attending. “Four years ago I voted for Bolsonaro. Now I’m Lula. We need to change this terrible government”, says she, who has lived in the United States for 38 years and keeps all the evidence of the elections in which she voted in the country.
Overall abstention was high. Of the 697,000 registered voters outside the country, about 300,000 voted, largely because many voters need to travel to other cities to vote. This was the case of student Stella Polachini, 18 years old, who lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, and went to Framingham, a city with a high concentration of Brazilians two hours away, in the Boston metropolitan area.
“I decided to travel because it’s important to vote for president, I’m contributing to the country. I wanted to be able to vote for senator and governor too”, says she, who stood in line for about 40 minutes at a temperature of 12°C. The atmosphere was calm, she reports, despite occasional arguments.
The elections were marked by long lines and hours of waiting to vote. The president of the Regional Electoral Court of the Federal District, responsible for sending and preparing electronic voting machines, acknowledged that Brazilians faced difficulties and shared the responsibility with Itamaraty. “Unfortunately, we had problems. We will have to correct them in the future”, stated the judge Roberval Belinati.
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