In Rio de Janeiro, Lula supporters hugged in the street, leaned on car horns and held up the “L” sign. In Belo Horizonte, the capital of swing state Minas Gerais, they chanted and sang. By nightfall on Sunday, October 25, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had his fourth term as Brazil’s president: more than 51% of the vote, a lead of about 4.4 million over Senator Flávio Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro was in Brasilia, and he was not conceding. “It is impossible to recognize the election result given how these events unfolded,” he told supporters. “We will take legal action. We will ask for this election to be annulled.”
The two extra hours
His complaint is about the clock. Voting ran two hours late after Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin granted a request from Lula’s campaign, which cited “incidents” affecting buses that carry voters to polling places in several states. Bolsonaro’s campaign had asked for more time in some areas too, pointing to heavy rain. The order came around 5 p.m. in Brasilia, just as polls were meant to close, and many stations had already shut.
Paulo Sotero of the Brazil Institute at the Wilson Center told CNN the extension “was not an irregularity” because the court authorized it over localized problems. He put Bolsonaro’s chances of a recount or a new election as “very very slim”. “I think this is a done deal,” he said.
A comeback and a first
Lula, 80, had lost the first round. Few expected him to turn it around in three weeks, but his campaign surged on street demonstrations and a heavy social media push. No candidate had won the presidency after finishing second in the first round since direct elections returned in 1989. In his victory remarks Lula thanked the country’s youth, who “took to the streets to defend democracy”, and promised to “change the way we govern this country”.
The win cuts against a regional tide. Argentina, Chile and Colombia now have conservative leaders, and elections since April 2025 in several other countries went to the right. It also denied the Bolsonaro movement a win that Flávio’s father Jair, now imprisoned for trying to overturn his 2022 defeat, could not manage either.
A country split down the middle
More than 48% of voters chose Bolsonaro, and Lula must now govern with the most right-wing Congress of Brazil’s democratic era. Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party made the biggest gains. It won 19 of 54 Senate seats on October 4 and will hold the chamber’s largest bloc, 28 of 81. With allies, the right will command roughly 49 senators, enough to meet the three-fifths threshold for constitutional amendments. Lula will need broad negotiation for almost anything. His term starts on January 5, 2027.
Washington and the rainforest
Donald Trump said before the polls closed that he was “monitoring” the runoff. He did not endorse Bolsonaro directly, but his administration would clearly have preferred a conservative in charge of a country of 213 million. Washington sees Latin America as its sphere of influence and wants China’s presence in the hemisphere reduced. Brazil, oil-rich and holder of the world’s second-largest rare earth reserves, is the one big South American country without a right-wing leader. Lula had warned the US not to interfere and insisted Brazil would “never fit into anyone’s backyard”. Section 301 tariffs imposed by the United States in July, including measures tied to ethanol and the Pix payment system, have already strained trade.
Environmentalists, meanwhile, were relieved. They had feared a Bolsonaro win would hand more power to agribusiness and mining, and pointed to record deforestation and forest fires in the Amazon under his father.
Sources
- What a Lula or Bolsonaro victory would mean for Brazil and the world
- Lula faces hostile Congress and divided country after Brazil election win
- Brazil’s Lula completes stunning turnaround to secure election victory, as Trump ally Bolsonaro rejects result | CNN
Photo: Ricardo Stuckert/PR (CC BY 2.0)
