More than one million Lula supporters rally on eve of Brazilian election runoff

NEW: More than one million Lula supporters flood Rio's Copacabana beach on the eve of Brazil's election runoff, with nearly 159 million voters set to choose between the leftwing incumbent and Flávio Bolsonaro.

More than a million people just turned Copacabana beach red.

On the eve of Brazil's runoff, Lula supporters packed two and a half miles of Rio's most famous sand, and the pictures are something else, flags and banners stretching as far as the drone can see. One woman carried a Brazilian flag with a single word on it, democracia.

Here's why the stakes are so brutal. Lula is eighty years old, chasing a fourth non-consecutive term, and he lost the first round to Flávio Bolsonaro, forty seven to forty five. Nearly 159 million Brazilians vote on Sunday, and the polls say it's a dead heat. Since democracy returned to Brazil in the eighties, no candidate who lost the first round has ever come back to win the second.

So Lula isn't just fighting for re-election. He's trying to do something Brazil has never seen.

This is Sara White, reporting for HIT.