Three weeks ago, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva looked like he was on his way out. On Sunday, October 25, Brazil’s veteran left-wing president turned that around, winning the presidential runoff against right-wing senator Flávio Bolsonaro and securing a fourth term, something no Brazilian president had done before.

The win was narrow, the country remains deeply split and his opponent has not accepted the result. Here is what we know, based on reporting from BBC News, AP and The Guardian.

The final numbers

With every polling station counted, Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court announced that Lula took 51.79% of the valid votes against 48.21% for Flávio Bolsonaro. According to the official tally published with the results, that works out to roughly 64.3 million votes for Lula and 59.8 million for his rival, a margin of about 4.4 million votes.

That is a remarkable reversal. In the first round on October 4, Flávio Bolsonaro finished ahead of Lula, and many observers doubted the incumbent could recover in just three weeks. Yesterday’s preview on this site described the race as a knife-edge contest. In the end, the 81-year-old president edged clear.

How Lula turned it around

The BBC reports that Lula’s campaign bounced back after the first-round defeat on the strength of street demonstrations and a massive social media push. His Workers’ Party also organised huge rallies in the run-up to the second round, a sign of its grassroots strength.

His victory also bucks a regional trend. Across Latin America, voters have been punishing incumbents and turning to the right, and large countries including Argentina, Chile and Colombia now have conservative leaders. Brazil, a country of about 213 million people, now stands apart as the only big South American nation not governed by the right.

Bolsonaro says he will seek annulment

Flávio Bolsonaro, the eldest son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, has refused to recognise the outcome. According to the BBC, he called the two-hour extension of polling “inexplicable”, even though both his campaign and Lula’s had asked for polling stations to stay open longer. He told supporters in Brasília that he would seek the annulment of the election.

That stance echoes the tensions of 2022, when Jair Bolsonaro lost to Lula. The elder Bolsonaro is now serving a 27-year sentence for plotting a coup after that defeat. For now, there is no indication from the reporting that the electoral court’s result is in doubt, and Lula and his supporters are celebrating what they call a “historic victory”.

A tough road ahead

Winning may turn out to be the easy part. Lula’s new term begins on January 5, 2027, and the BBC notes he will face the most challenging political landscape since he first took office in 2003:

  • **A hostile Congress.** Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party made the biggest gains in this year’s congressional elections, leaving Lula to govern alongside the most right-wing Congress of Brazil’s democratic era.
  • **A divided country.** More than 48% of voters backed his opponent, and bridging that gap will not be simple.
  • **Pressure from Washington.** US President Donald Trump did not directly endorse Flávio Bolsonaro, but his administration would have preferred a conservative in power. Lula had warned the US not to interfere and said Brazil would “never fit into anyone’s backyard”.

Lula has promised what he calls “a new way of governing” to bring Brazil’s political poles together, though he has offered few details. He will be 85 by the end of his fourth term.

Why the world is watching

Brazil matters well beyond its borders. It is oil-rich and holds the world’s second-largest reserves of rare earth minerals, which makes its alignment important to both the United States and China. Lula is widely seen as friendlier to Beijing than his rival would have been.

Environmental groups are also relieved. They had warned that a Bolsonaro victory could hand more power to agribusiness and mining interests, pointing to record deforestation and fires in the Amazon during Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency. Lula’s win keeps the country on its current environmental course, at least for now.

The bottom line

Lula has pulled off one of the most striking comebacks in recent Latin American politics, winning a fourth term after trailing in the first round. But with his opponent contesting the result, a hostile Congress waiting and nearly half the country voting against him, the hardest part of his new presidency may be just beginning. We will keep following how Flávio Bolsonaro’s challenge plays out.

Image: Palacio do Planalto by Annemariebr at English Wikipedia via Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain Mark 1.0