Polls closed at 5 p.m. local time in Brazil as President Jair Bolsonaro and former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva face off in a tight battle.

As of 6:25 p.m. ET, and with 95% of voting machines counted, Lula has 50.7% of the vote, while Bolsonaro has 49.3% of the vote.

Brazil, which has an estimated 217 million people, is the only country that uses a fully electronic voting system, allowing votes to be counted relatively quickly.

The health of Brazil's economy and democratic institutions are two major issues that voters had to consider when going to the ballot box. The fate of the Amazon rainforest is also a key issue in the race.

Bolsonaro, 67, a right-wing ally of former U.S. President Donald Trump, has a platform that supports privatization, and deregulation. Under Bolsonaro, environmental funding was cut in favor of supporting the agribusiness industry. He has also repeatedly suggested that election officials manipulate election results and that hackers attempted to steal the 2018 election from him but failed. These claims have been debunked by election officials, fact-checking agencies, and independent election-security experts.

Bolsonaro has strongholds in the more developed and wealthier areas of the country while Lula's support is more pronounced in the rural northeast, which makes up 27% of the country's voting population.

Lula, 77, the left-leaning former president and union leader, campaigned on eradicating illegal logging and mining and promoting social welfare programs for the unhoused. The candidate was imprisoned on corruption charges in 2018 and freed after a year and a half behind bars following an annulment of the case by the Brazil Supreme Court.

Lula has led in polls for the majority of the past year. He finished with the most votes before the runoff.

The election has highlighted a heated and divisive political environment. Federal Highway Police have been accused of trying to suppress votes and instances of voters shouting at a one-another in polling places have been reported.

There has also been a rise in misinformation which has risen in the weeks leading up to the election with opponents of Bolosnaro accusing him of being a cannibal and a pedophile and Lula opponents calling him a "satanist" and gang leader.

Bolsonaro, who has never lost an election during his three decades in politics, has suggested that he may not concede if a majority of votes count in favor of Lula.