'We need Lula': Brazilians celebrate leftist leader's narrow victory

With 99.97% of votes counted, Silva, a former factory worker who became Brazil’s first working-class president exactly 20 years ago, had secured 50.9% of the vote. Bolsonaro, a firebrand who was elected in 2018, received 49.10%.

Addressing journalists at a hotel in São Paulo, Lula vowed to reunify the country after a toxic race for power that has profoundly divided one of the world’s largest democracies.