Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has won Brazil’s presidential runoff with 64,256,232 votes, or 51.79 per cent of valid votes, against 59,826,041 votes, or 48.21 per cent, for Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, according to Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court. The Brazil Lula fourth term victory, confirmed on October 26, makes Lula the first candidate since the return of direct presidential elections in 1989 to win a runoff after finishing second in the first round.
The comeback was dramatic. In the first round on October 4, Flávio Bolsonaro — eldest son of imprisoned former president Jair Bolsonaro — finished with 47.03 per cent against Lula’s 45.16 per cent, a lead of roughly 2.2 million votes. In the runoff on October 25, Lula added about 10.4 million votes while Bolsonaro added only about 3.7 million, according to analyses of the court figures. Turnout climbed to about 80.8 per cent of eligible voters.
At 5:01 p.m. on runoff day, when polling stations were due to close, Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin ordered voting extended nationwide until 7 p.m. That extension later became central to Bolsonaro’s challenge to the result, though the court announced Lula’s victory and Reuters reported that Lula told supporters he would govern for all Brazilians.
A governing challenge ahead
Lula’s fourth term — he first took office in 2003 — begins in 2027 facing a conservative Congress. Conservative forces and the Bolsonarista right control roughly 59 per cent of the Chamber of Deputies and 64 per cent of the Federal Senate, according to an LLYC analysis of the outcome. That balance will make Lula’s legislative agenda difficult and gives the opposition a powerful check on the executive.
Analysts cited by UOL calculated that Lula captured roughly three of every four new votes cast in the runoff, driven by mass street mobilisations and a “Lula’s Army” WhatsApp channel that turned the race around in three weeks, according to one account. The drop in abstention to 19.21 per cent also broke historical patterns.
The result’s wider meaning
The runoff was watched far beyond Brazil. US President Donald Trump had backed Bolsonaro, and the outcome complicates Washington’s push to expand influence in Latin America, according to one analysis. Markets reacted sharply on October 26, with the dollar climbing from R$4.99 to R$5.60 in a single session, a rise of more than 12 per cent, according to market reports.
Lula’s victory is historic in its own right: no previous runoff loser has come back to win in Brazil’s modern democratic era. Whether he can govern effectively with a hostile Congress — and whether the losing camp accepts the result — will shape Brazil’s politics well into 2027.
