When the results were declared just after midnight UK time, the choice of Brazil’s 159 million voters was narrow, but clear. The 80-year-old leftist received 51.79% of the vote to his rival’s 48.21% – about 4.3m votes – in what Lula called “a defeat for denialism”.
A visibly angry Bolsonaro has already refused to concede, citing a decision to extend voting for an extra two hours – although both sides had called for it, for different reasons.
The outcome was an unprecedented turnaround after a populist surge in first-round voting at the beginning of the month left Brazil’s progressives reeling.
In those early October elections, Flávio Bolsonaro received 56.1m votes to Lula’s 53.8m – 47.03% to 45.16% – putting the 45-year-old scion of the authoritarian clan in pole position: not once, since the return of democracy to Brazil in 1985, has the first-round runner-up managed to turn the game around and win the second ballot.
In the intervening weeks, the polls tightened dramatically, putting Bolsonaro ahead by only fractions of a percentage point.
“This is the crescendo of an incredible, if sometimes controversial, 50-year political career,” Tom says. I can hear crowds of Lula supporters cheering in the background as we speak, and fireworks exploding. “It saw Lula go from rural poverty to union leader to the first elected working-class leader of Brazil, who has helped millions of people escape poverty and rode a commodities boom in his first two terms”.
For Brazil, a Lula win represents stability and the assurance that the country’s democratic future is secure, at least in the short term. “Over the past four years, Lula has reduced deforestation in the Amazon by more than 70%. He’s come to the help of the Indigenous people who live there. He’s cracked down on illegal mining,” Tom tells me. “It’s very positive news is that all this will continue.”
How did Lula turn things around?
“Bolsonarismo is a far-right movement … that has put down deep roots in Brazilian society,” Bernardo Mello Franco, a political columnist for the Rio broadsheet O Globo, told Tom earlier this month, pointing to a series of societal shifts have contributed to this.
Evangelical Christianity has expanded across Brazil in recent decades, with church leaders throwing their support behind the socially conservative policies favoured by Bolsanaro Sr and Jr.
Pro-gun Flavio Bolsonaro harnessed voter frustration at chronic levels of urban crime and violence. Despite being embedded in Brazilian politics for decades, he successfully portrayed himself as an anti-establishment outsider, using social media far more effectively than his rival.
And others believe he had significant help: a dozen watchdogs and research groups have published reports alleging that Meta may have favoured the senator’s campaign. The controversy grew after Brazils’ electoral court ordered Meta not to give the candidates “unequal treatment”, while the company called the allegations “false and unfounded”.
Progressives were galvanised after the first-round results revealed a record abstention rate of 21%, more common among Lula-supporting groups such as lower-income voters, and their focus sharpened on mobilisation. Millions joined a WhatsApp channel called “Lula’s army”, which sent out daily instructions on how to make supportive content go viral. The 80-year-old incumbent, who only took ownership of his first smartphone in recent days, started posting to Instagram and TikTok. For the first time, the president’s digital reach overtook that of Bolsonaro.
Meanwhile, the Bolsonaro campaign was hit by a succession of scandals. In a revelation that made the UK’s partygate seem tame by comparison, last week the Brazilian magazine Piauí claimed that at the height of the 2020 coronavirus outbreak, Flávio Bolsonaro attended a boat party along with sex workers and vaccine lobbyists hoping to cut deals with his father’s government.
Amid speculation that a comeback might be possible, at a million-strong rally on Copacabana beach in Rio on Saturday, activists unfurled an enormous yellow and green banner declaring: “We are going to turn this around!”
And so he did.
What role did Trump play in the election?
The US president has boasted about “lots of people that I got elected” in Latin America, styling himself as a kingmaker after a succession of right-wing candidates aligned with Washington have won power.
Although Donald Trump did not openly endorse Flávio Bolsonaro, his influence loomed large. Last year, he denounced the supreme court trial of his ally Jair Bolsonaro as a “witch-hunt”, imposing extraordinary 50% tariffs on Brazilian imports as retribution for what he claimed was political persecution.
Lula has styled himself as the country’s defender against Trump’s “colonial” designs. His victory consolidates a multilateral foreign policy and pragmatic approach to relations with the US, China and Russia. He has rejected invitations to join the controversial coalition of Latin American countries conducting military operations against drug cartels alongside the Pentagon, which would have resulted in much greater US involvement on Brazilian soil.
Furthermore, a win for pro-democracy campaigners in one country may serve to bolster international counterparts. As our senior international correspondent Julian Borger sets out in this compelling piece, along with the Brazil vote, a series of high-stakes elections in Serbia yesterday, Israel on Tuesday and the US next week are closely interlinked, and Lula’s win may have global ramifications, as leaders across Latin America and the world congratulate him this morning.
What does the result mean for the environment, in Brazil and beyond?
Last week, Tom travelled to Roraima, the northern state where Bolsonaro registered his best result nationwide. On his trip, he heard first-hand from Indigenous leaders and conservationists on why the populist’s success was causing panic.
His father’s environmentally devastating administration facilitated an illegal gold rush – turbo-charged by record global gold prices – that ravaged the Yanomami Indigenous reserve on the northern reaches of the Amazon.
When Lula beat Jair Bolsonaro in 2022, the left-winger launched an environmentalist mission to expel the illegal miners, taking on the multibillion dollar extraction industry. Alongside wider green policies, he reduced deforestation in the Amazon to record lows.
“Tragically,” says Tom, “the environment only came up in the final presidential debate of this campaign.”
“Given that the Amazon makes up such a large portion of Brazil, and how important that region is to the global climate crisis, it’s amazing that it’s not been debated more. But people were voting more on economy, public security and culture war issues.”
In that final debate last Friday, Tom says that Lula “tried to show off the excellent, if incomplete, work that his government’s done in protecting the environment”.
Many will be relieved at Bolsonaro’s loss, as his vision for the Amazon was almost identical to his father’s.
While a Lula victory brings hope that these policies will continue, he will be working with a newly elected congress that features a record number of rightwing politicians hostile to Indigenous rights and environmental issues.
How will Bolsonaro respond?
The immediate aftermath of the election results is likely to be fraught, warns Tom, with Flávio Bolsonaro saying it was “impossible to concede the election result”.
“The Bolsonaro response is exactly as I feared but I don’t think it will mean very much,” Tom says. “All these world leaders are now recognising Lula’s win and I don’t think Bolsonaro has a hope of overturning this result”.
Tom suspects that in the coming days Bolsonaro will head to the States, to avoid ongoing criminal investigations. “That’s not to say there might not be violence from his supporters, but his political career is done. The fact they’ve lost is a sign that the name ‘Bolsonaro’ is toxic for a slight majority of Brazilian people.”
This morning’s results were an unprecedented turnaround<strong>,</strong> according to election analysts. Photograph: Amanda Perobelli/Reuters
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