Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva secured a historic victory in Brazil on Sunday.
With this result, he became the first Brazilian president to win a fourth term. Lula achieved this success just days before turning 81, at an age when many other leaders withdraw from politics.
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His comeback against right-wing candidate Flávio Bolsonaro produced another record. Since the restoration of democracy in Brazil in 1985, no president had managed to overturn a defeat suffered in the first round.
The Workers’ Party candidate added more than 10 million votes during the three weeks between the two rounds, while his opponent secured only 3.6 million additional votes.
Lula’s margin was larger than in 2022, when he defeated Jair Bolsonaro, Flávio’s father and Brazil’s president at the time. The new victory keeps Lula as the leading figure of the left in the region, at a time when right-wing forces are expanding their influence in Latin America.
Like his father four years ago, Flávio Bolsonaro did not accept the result. The senator said he would seek to have the election annulled through the courts.
He challenged the decision by Cristiano Zanin, a justice on the Federal Supreme Court, to extend the voting process by two hours. According to Bolsonaro, the uneven implementation of the measure had undermined equality between the candidates.
“It is impossible to recognize the election results given the circumstances in which these events took place,” he said.
However, Bolsonaro’s campaign had also called for voting to be extended in some areas, citing voters’ difficulties in reaching polling stations because of heavy rainfall.
The challenge to the result did not prevent celebrations of Lula’s triumph. But the right’s control of the legislature could make governing during his new term more difficult.
This is the paradox facing Lula: a historic electoral victory, but limited room to govern.
How the result was overturned
The electoral map helps explain how Lula overturned the first-round deficit. In Minas Gerais, the Brazilian state with the second-largest number of voters, he went from a loss of nearly 590,000 votes in the first round to a victory by around 99,000 votes. Between the two candidates, the difference was approximately 690,000 votes.
Minas Gerais has voted for the winner of every direct presidential election since 1989, and this time its result also matched the national outcome.
Flávio Bolsonaro retained his advantage in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, but Lula won in the capitals of both states, which are also Brazil’s largest cities. In the city of Rio, he also managed to overturn the first-round result.
His victory was also aided by the results in all nine northeastern states, as well as higher voter turnout. Abstention fell from 21.08% in the first round to around 19.2% in the runoff, bringing nearly three million more Brazilians to the polling stations.
This increase in turnout cannot be attributed entirely to Lula, but it shows the importance of mobilizing citizens who had not voted in the first round.
The campaign also unfolded through Brazilians’ phones. After finishing second in the first round, Lula expanded his digital mobilization campaign, aiming to turn existing support into actual votes.
His task was not only to persuade undecided voters, but also to encourage those who already supported him to go to the polling stations.
This effort was accompanied by measures and proposals presented in the final minutes of the campaign, focused on voters’ concrete concerns. Lula signed a legal measure raising the income threshold for individual micro-entrepreneurs, proposed new schemes for renegotiating consumer debt and supported a ban on online betting, whose expansion has contributed to rising household debt.
On security, he supported lowering the age of criminal responsibility for particularly serious crimes. This is a traditional right-wing position and was intended to respond to demands for tougher measures against crime.
More than an obstacle ahead
After the celebrations, Lula’s first major obstacle will be in Congress. Right-wing parties will hold 303 of the 513 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, while the left will hold 124 and the center 86.
The situation is even more difficult in the Senate, where the right will control nearly two-thirds of the seats. This does not mean that every senator will automatically be an opponent, but Lula will have to build alliances beyond his political base to pass initiatives and protect the government’s priorities.
The map of state governments also shows that the conservative camp retains a strong position. Agreements with governors will be another test for the president, as implementing his policies will require cooperation at the state level.
“Once we win the election, we will no longer have opponents. I must govern for 215 million people,” Lula said in his victory speech.
Speaking about the need to cooperate with a more conservative legislature, he added: “I did not choose Congress. The people chose it. And this is the Congress with which I will vote, work and get things done.”
Another urgent task for the president will be to turn economic growth into tangible relief for citizens. During the campaign, perceptions of the state of the economy were among the main factors weakening support for Lula.
Addressing this dissatisfaction will be complicated by fiscal constraints. Debt, the deficit and high interest rates limit the government’s ability to increase spending, while also prompting debates over how to finance electoral promises without harming social programs.
With an unfriendly Congress, decisions over who will pay and where cuts will be made will test Lula’s negotiating skills.
Security will be another area of pressure. The president will face demands for tougher crime policies, as the right has made a hard-line approach to crime one of the main pillars of its platform.
Lula must also prepare a successor for the left, which continues to depend heavily on his political weight to win presidential elections.
Autonomy and isolation in the region
The difficulties are not limited to Brazil. As the leader of Latin America’s largest economy, and with China as its main trading partner, Lula’s government has used the country’s economic weight to resist the trade and political demands of the Trump administration.
Few neighboring countries can exercise this degree of autonomy.
A Bolsonaro victory, by contrast, would have represented a significant success for Washington’s efforts to consolidate its dominance in the hemisphere and curb Beijing’s influence.
However, Lula will operate in a difficult regional reality and risks remaining largely isolated, as left-wing allies such as Alberto Fernández in Argentina, Gabriel Boric in Chile and Gustavo Petro in Colombia are no longer in power.
“Lula faces a political environment very different from the one that existed when he first took office, during the ‘Pink Tide’,” said Michael Paarlberg, an associate professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University.
He was referring to the wave of left-wing victories in Latin America during the 2000s and 2010s, adding: “At that time, he had several regional allies and could play both sides to Brazil’s advantage.”
Relations with Trump and the US midterm elections
As he prepares for his fourth term, Lula will also have to determine his approach to the United States. In September, during a speech at the United Nations, he sent Washington the message: “Brazil belongs to no one.”
However, the Brazilian president has also shown caution. When the United States imposed a new round of tariffs on Brazilian goods in the middle of the year, he did not rule out retaliatory measures.
“Lula has shown an ability to adapt to Trump. He has balanced occasional harsh criticism with conciliatory gestures,” Paarlberg said.
“Lula is not ideologically anti-American, nor does he have difficulty working with right-wing governments,” he added.
Paarlberg emphasized that the re-elected president will closely follow the US midterm elections, particularly if the Republican Party loses control of one or both chambers of Congress. Such a development could lead to greater scrutiny of Trump’s agenda.
Lula’s victory not only halted the series of victories by the right and by candidates backed by Trump. It also interrupted a string of defeats that had battered the Latin American left for 18 months.
The unexpected result opens a broader debate: does the shift to the right represent a long-term wave, or is it simply part of a political pendulum?
“Lula’s victory shows that the far right, particularly Bolsonaro’s movement, has a ceiling of support, because many voters consider it too radical,” Paarlberg said.
According to him, the result also shows that support from the White House and its economic measures “are not decisive factors” in elections.
In a Latin America where political influence is increasingly being shaped by rising leaders, Lula remains a statesman with experience and international reach.
Now he must decide which direction Brazil, South America’s largest country, will take over the next four years./CNN
