Flávio Bolsonaro has received zero votes in 106 ballot boxes in the second round of Brazil’s presidential election, according to an analysis of the official tallies published on October 27.
In those same sections, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva collected 14,860 votes, the study by the consultancy Paris Group found. The survey, which used artificial intelligence to map results published by the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), was reported by the daily Folha de S.Paulo.
The findings have fed claims from the Bolsonaro camp that Lula’s victory on October 25 was fraudulent. Bolsonaro’s brother Eduardo, a former congressman, said in a video recorded in English that the result was “statistically impossible” and urged foreign governments not to recognise it.
The 106 sections are spread across 67 municipalities in 18 states. Sixty-five are in the North region and 29 in the Northeast, with the state of Amazonas alone accounting for 30.
Most sit in indigenous villages, schools or health posts. In Uiramutã, in the northern state of Roraima, seven ballot boxes in indigenous communities returned no votes for Bolsonaro, while one section in Tabatinga, on the border with Colombia and Peru, gave Lula 354 votes and his rival none.
Lula drew a blank in four rural ballot boxes in Rio Grande do Sul and Pará, which gave Bolsonaro 296 votes between them. In the first round on October 4, Bolsonaro had already recorded zero votes in 81 sections and Lula in eight, according to a check of the TSE records by Jornal Razão.
The 106 sections represent around 0.02 per cent of Brazil’s almost 498,000 ballot boxes. Lula won the run-off with 51.79 per cent of valid votes against 48.21 per cent, a margin of some 4.4 million, overturning Bolsonaro’s first-round lead.
The same analysis identified 211 municipalities in which Lula won the second round after Bolsonaro had come first in the opening vote.
Bolsonaro said on election night that he would seek to have the result annulled, citing a court decision to keep polling stations open for two extra hours. His Liberal Party (PL) later acknowledged the outcome, while US President Donald Trump said the vote looked rigged without offering evidence.
TSE president Nunes Marques said he had complete confidence in the electoral process and rejected a claim by Bolsonaro that PL observers had been removed from the counting room. Bolsonaro has been barred from leaving the country by the Supreme Federal Court and has surrendered his passports.
In Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen congratulated Lula within hours, saying democracy and multilateralism had prevailed in Brazil. Brazil is the largest economy in Mercosur, whose interim trade agreement with the European Union has applied provisionally since May 1.
