New Zealand Brazilians Vote 80.5% for Lula

BRAZIL · ELECTION DAY · VOTE ABROAD

Brazilians in Wellington, New Zealand, were the first to finish voting in Sunday’s presidential runoff, and ballot-box reports show President Lula ahead of Senator Flávio Bolsonaro there by 418 votes to 101.

The first Brazil overseas vote to be fully reported in the Brazil election 2026 runoff comes from Wellington, New Zealand, where the electoral court’s ballot-box reports show President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva with 418 votes against 101 for Senator Flávio Bolsonaro. New Zealand closed its polls at 5 p.m. local time on Sunday 25 October, which was 1 a.m. in Brasília and midnight on the US East Coast, hours before Brazil’s own polls open at 8 a.m. in Brasília (7 a.m. ET); our Brazil runoff date page has the full schedule.

Brazilians abroad are only about 0.6% of the electorate, so this is not a forecast, and the final surveys are on our Brazil election polls page. What bettors expect is on our Brazil election odds page, and the court starts publishing official results from Brazil’s own polling stations at 5 p.m. in Brasília (4 p.m. ET).

What Wellington Voted

The court’s own files show that the five polling sections in Wellington reported 418 votes for Lula and 101 for Flávio Bolsonaro, which is 80.5% against 19.5% of the 519 valid votes. Another 4 voters cast blank ballots and 3 cast null votes, so 526 people voted out of about 3,100 on the Wellington roll.

Turnout rose from the first round on Sunday 4 October, when 339 of 3,118 registered voters took part and Lula won 234 votes (70.5%) to Flávio Bolsonaro’s 64 (19.3%). Other candidates shared the remaining 34 valid votes that day.

Between the two rounds Lula’s count in Wellington rose by 184 votes and Flávio Bolsonaro’s by 37, but the numbers are small enough that a few dozen voters can move a percentage by several points. Wellington is the only New Zealand city with a Brazilian polling place on the court’s list of 186 cities abroad.

The Brazilian news site g1 was first to add up the reports, and its table puts Lula’s 80.54% against 70.34% in the 2022 runoff in New Zealand, when it lists 389 votes for Lula and 164 for Jair Bolsonaro. The Rio Times could not check those 2022 figures on the court’s current site, so they are g1’s.

How Brazilians Vote Abroad

Brazilians abroad vote only for president and vice president, in person, at polling sections run by the electoral courts in 186 cities, mostly in embassies and consulates but also in hotels and schools. The court counted 918,876 registered voters abroad in mid-September, about 0.6% of the 158.7 million total and up from about 697,000 in 2022.

Polls open at 8 a.m. and close at 5 p.m. local time in each city, so New Zealand finishes first and the US West Coast last. Each polling section counts its own votes and sends a ballot-box report, and the court’s results site held all five Wellington reports by 1:51 a.m. in Brasília on Sunday 25 October.

The United States is the largest overseas bloc, with about 265,000 registered voters in 11 cities, followed by Portugal with roughly 134,000 and Japan with roughly 88,000. Those figures are our sums of the court’s first-round city files.

g1 says the court will publish a consolidated overseas result only after 5 p.m. in Brasília, when voting ends in Brazil. Until then, news sites such as g1 add up the machine reports themselves, so their tallies are unofficial.

What Has Been Counted So Far

At about 5 a.m. ET (9 a.m. UTC) on Sunday 25 October, the court’s results site listed ballot-box reports from only five of the 186 cities abroad, all in Oceania and Asia. Wellington, Sydney and Seoul were complete, while Canberra and Nagoya were only partly reported.

Wellington closed at midnight ET, Sydney and Canberra at 2 a.m. ET, and Seoul and Nagoya at 4 a.m. ET. Tokyo and Hamamatsu, which closed at the same hour as Nagoya, had no reports on the court’s site at 5 a.m. ET.

The count will keep growing through Sunday as the rest of Japan, then the Middle East, Europe, Africa and the Americas report. The last polls abroad close on the US West Coast and in western Canada, at 9 p.m. in Brasília (8 p.m. ET).

What the Brazil Overseas Vote Shows

Overseas voters lean differently by country, so one city says little about the others. In the first round on Sunday 4 October, Lula led in Wellington (70.5% of valid votes) and in Portugal (52.5%), while Flávio Bolsonaro led in Japan (71.8%) and across the 11 US cities (61.1%).

Those percentages are our sums of the court’s city files, not totals the court publishes, and they count valid votes only. Turnout abroad was 37.3% in the first round, so the overseas electorate is self-selected rather than a sample of Brazil.

Wellington’s 526 voters are less than 0.2% of the 341,766 people who voted abroad in the first round. Lula’s share there is up from 70.5% on 4 October and from 70.3% in the 2022 runoff, according to g1’s table.

What It Means for You

About 265,000 Brazilians in 11 US cities can vote, the largest overseas bloc, and their polls close at 5 p.m. local time, which is 6 p.m. in Brasília on the East Coast and 9 p.m. in California. The court starts publishing at 5 p.m. in Brasília (4 p.m. ET), so any overseas total shown then will still be missing the US reports.

The court lists US polling places in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Hartford, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Orlando, San Francisco and Washington. The largest first-round rolls were in Boston (about 53,000 voters), Miami (about 40,000) and New York (about 39,000).

Only 28.4% of those US voters took part in the first round, below the 37.3% overseas average, and Flávio Bolsonaro led among them with 61.1% of valid votes. That is a first-round pattern in a small group, not a signal about the national vote.

Brazilian and US stock markets are closed on Sunday, so the first market reaction to any result comes on Monday 26 October. The Wellington tally is too small to be a market signal, since the national count is what will matter to investors.

What Prediction Markets Say

On Polymarket, a prediction market, traders gave Flávio Bolsonaro 79.8% and Lula 20.5% for winning the presidency at 5:06 a.m. ET on Sunday 25 October. The Brazil Presidential Election market has drawn about US$197 million in trading, including about US$28 million on the Flávio Bolsonaro contract and US$31 million on the Lula contract.

Over the past 24 hours the Flávio Bolsonaro price moved by less than half a percentage point, according to Polymarket’s own data. The market’s listed end date is 11:59 p.m. ET on Sunday 25 October.

These prices are bets, not polls and not results, and the Wellington tally is only 526 voters. Live prices are shown below.

What Is Not Known

Nobody knows yet how many Brazilians abroad will vote in total or how the vote will split, because polls in Europe and the Americas had not closed when this article was written. The court has not published a consolidated overseas result, and the Wellington figures are our own sum of five ballot-box reports, which matches g1’s.

The Rio Times could not check g1’s 2022 comparison figures on the court’s current site. Canberra (7 of 10 reports) and Nagoya (13 of 58) were incomplete at 5 a.m. ET, so neither Australia nor Japan had a full count yet.

No national result exists until polls in Brazil close at 5 p.m. in Brasília, and nothing in the Wellington tally changes that. It is also not known whether overseas turnout will rise as much elsewhere as it did in Wellington.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who won the Brazil vote in New Zealand?

Lula won the Wellington vote with 418 votes (80.5%) against 101 (19.5%) for Flávio Bolsonaro in the electoral court’s ballot-box reports. It covers only voters in New Zealand and says nothing about the national result.

How many Brazilians can vote abroad?

The electoral court counted 918,876 registered voters abroad in mid-September, about 0.6% of the 158.7 million electorate. The United States has the most, with about 265,000 in 11 cities.

When will official overseas results come out?

The court begins publishing results at 5 p.m. in Brasília (4 p.m. ET) on Sunday 25 October, and g1 says the consolidated overseas result follows after that time. US reports arrive later because polls there close between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. in Brasília.

Does the overseas vote predict the national result?

Not at all, because Brazilians abroad are about 0.6% of voters and lean differently by country. In the first round Lula led in Wellington and Portugal, while Flávio Bolsonaro led in Japan and the United States.

Why does New Zealand vote first?

New Zealand is 16 hours ahead of Brasília, so its polls closed at 1 a.m. in Brasília on Sunday, before Brazil’s polls open. Each city votes from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on its own local time.

Sources: Superior Electoral Court (TSE) results site, ballot-box reports of the five Wellington sections, runoff, 25 October 2026, TSE results site, first round, Wellington and foreign cities, 4 October 2026, TSE, voters abroad, 10 September 2026, TSE, voting abroad, TSE, voting hours and release of results, g1, vote abroad, 25 October 2026, Federal Senate, Flávio Bolsonaro profile, Agência Brasil, 24 October 2026, Polymarket, Brazil Presidential Election market. All opened on Sunday 25 October 2026. Percentages for foreign cities and groups are The Rio Times’s sums of the court’s city files.

This article was produced by The Rio Times’ automated newsroom system. How we use AI · Report an error · Editorial responsibility: Matthias Camenzind, Editor-in-Chief