Brazil elections 2022 live: voting closes in world’s fourth-largest democracy

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Brazilian frontrunner Luiz In?cio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, became the country’s first working-class president in 2002.

Lula stepped down after two terms in 2010 with approval ratings close to 90%. But the following decade saw the Workers’ party (PT) he helped found embroiled in a tangle of corruption scandals and accused of plunging Brazil into a brutal recession.

His apparently irremediable downfall was cemented in 2018 when he was jailed on corruption charges and barred from running in that year’s election, which Bolsonaro went on to win. Lula’s 580-day imprisonment seemed a melancholy end to a fairytale life that saw him rise from rural poverty to become one of the world’s most popular leaders.

But Lula was freed in late 2019 and his convictions were quashed on the grounds that he was unfairly tried by S?rgio Moro, a rightwing judge who later took a job in Bolsonaro’s cabinet.

Lula, who first sought the presidency in 1989, announced his sixth presidential run in May, vowing to beat Bolsonaro by staging “the greatest peaceful revolution the world has ever seen”.

Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the Brazilian elections. I’m Helen Sullivan, and I’ll be taking you through the results as they come in – which should be within the next 90 minutes or so.

Polls ahead of the election suggest that the country’s leftwing candidate Luiz In?cio Lula da Silva, who was president from 2003 to 2010 may secure an outright win – avoiding a second run-off.

One poll gave Lula 51% to Bolsonaro’s 37%, another gave them 50% and 36% respectively.