On October 25th, incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defeated his far-right opponent Flávio Bolsonaro in a historic Brazil’s presidential run-off election. Over the course of the election cycle, poll predictions swung back and forth between Lula and Bolsonaro. In the first round, Bolsonaro won 47% of the vote while Lula trailed at 45%, divided by 2.2 million voters. In a remarkable comeback, Lula clinched a decisive victory of 51.8%, gaining over 10 million more votes in the span of three weeks. No presidential candidate since democracy's return to Brazil has been able to overcome a first-round defeat. However, at 81 years old, Lula will remain in the Palácio do Planalto for a fourth term.
Lula began his political ascent as a union activist in the 1980s during Brazil’s military dictatorship, and since then has enjoyed a long and largely successful career. Barack Obama once described the president as “the most popular politician on earth,” applauding Lula's nearly 90% approval rating at the end of his second term. He has helped transform his country into a global economic powerhouse and implemented policy reforms that lifted roughly 30 million Brazilians out of poverty.
Even with these accomplishments, the 2026 presidential race proved quite contentious for the current incumbent. Flávio Bolsonaro, Lula’s right-wing opponent, is the son and successor of a former president now imprisoned for plotting a failed coup against Lula in the last election. Despite his family’s collusion in attempted state subversion, apparent voter disillusionment gave Flávio's campaign a slight competitive edge. On October 4th, 21% of the electorate refrained from voting in the first round elections, resulting in the highest abstention rate seen in decades.
So what explains these voter attitudes?
Corruption was a key feature of election discourse this election cycle. In September, an investigation report revealed evidence of Supreme Federal Court judge Alexandre de Moraes’s implication in Brazil’s largest-ever financial fraud scheme last year. Lula da Silva faces criticism for his association with Moraes, who spearheaded the trial against Flávio’s father, Jair Bolsonaro. The younger Bolsonaro is also under recent scrutiny for soliciting illegal funds from disgraced banker and fraud scandal mastermind Daniel Vorcaro. Leaked messages capture the candidate negotiating $24 million to finance his father’s biopic “Dark Horse.” Both candidates’ connection to the scandal seemed to have reopened several of the nation’s political wounds.
Throughout the 2010s, the widescale corruption probe, Operation Car Wash incriminated a slew of high-level government officials across the political spectrum, including the current president, for ties to a state-run oil company, Petrobras. In 2018, Lula was sentenced to 12 years in prison and banned from competing against Jair Bolsonaro that year. After Lula’s former chief of staff and successor Dilma Rousseff was impeached in 2016 alleged budgetary law violations, the Worker’s Party was left without a viable candidate to defend its 13 year dynasty. The elder Bolsonaro, who seemed like a fringe candidate, represented an anti-establishment alternative to the corruption voters had grown weary of during his first presidential bid. However, Jair Bolsonaro’s public approval honeymoon was brief. He quickly became embedded in controversy of his own following attempts to expand executive power and entanglement in Supreme Court battles. Four years later, the anti-incumbent pendulum that fueled Jair’s campaign swung in favor of Lula, whose sentence was annulled in time for another presidential race.
This year, the Lula and Bolsonaro names were on Brazil’s ballot once again. The rise in absentee voters reflect the country’s exhaustion with pervasive institutional corruption and its politics’ dysfunctional status quo. Despite growing political ambivalence and the resurgence of far-right extremism, Lula managed to overcome these obstacles to victory through grassroots mobilization. Following the first round results, pro-Lula demonstrations led by students, artists, and local activists swept across the country. The Whatsapp channel “Lula’s Army” grew from 50,000 to almost 11 million during the interim period before the runoff.
Lula credits these efforts in his acceptance speech. “We are going to change the way that this country is governed,” he declares. While this sentiment remains to be seen in practice, it reflects a shifting tide in Brazilian politics and an energized electorate that is ready for democratic revival.