Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has pulled off a political comeback that no Brazilian presidential candidate has managed in nearly four decades.
On Sunday, the 80-year-old leftist president won a record fourth non-consecutive term, overcoming a first-round defeat to right-wing Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of jailed former President Jair Bolsonaro.
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Lula won more than 51 percent of the vote to Bolsonaro’s 48 percent. Some 98.76 percent of the ballots were counted when electoral authorities declared him the winner.
Sunday’s results were far from certain, keeping Brazilians on edge until the very end. Bolsonaro and Lula had been virtually tied in the polls in the lead-up to the election.
A last-minute decision to extend voting hours sparked accusations of election interference and questions about whether the result could face legal challenges.
Already, Senator Bolsonaro has pledged to annul the vote, crediting the extended hours with sowing voter confusion.
Here are five key takeaways.
Lula makes history with an unprecedented re-election
Just three weeks ago, Lula looked like he was in trouble.
Bolsonaro had surprised many observers by beating the incumbent in the first round of voting on October 4, winning 47.03 percent of the vote to Lula’s 45.16 percent. The difference was 2.2 million votes.
But Lula spent the next three weeks trying to bring back voters who stayed home in the first round, while making a renewed pitch to those concerned about the cost of living and the future of his signature social programmes.
In the final days of the campaign, opinion polls showed the two candidates virtually tied.
Bolsonaro briefly took the lead as ballots were counted on Sunday evening. But Lula ultimately pulled ahead as results began arriving from the northeast, according to the Reuters news agency.
The northeast has long been a strong source of support for Lula and his Workers’ Party.
Bolsonaro, meanwhile, has large bases of support in the south and southeast of the country, as well as the centre-west.
For Lula, the victory means an unprecedented fourth term as president. For Bolsonaro, Sunday marks a defeat in his bid to return his family to the presidency.
No other candidate in modern Brazilian history has placed second in the first round of a presidential vote only to win in a run-off.
At age 80, Lula is also on track to beat his own record as the oldest Brazilian president to be sworn in since the country’s return to democracy.
Brazil’s last-minute voting extension sparks confusion
As the presidential run-off entered its final hours on Sunday, both campaigns were calling for voting to be extended.
Lula’s campaign accused local officials of deliberately reducing public transport services in several cities, making it difficult for lower-income voters to reach polling stations.
Bolsonaro’s campaign, meanwhile, requested more time for voters in areas affected by heavy rain and flooding.
In Minas Gerais, the regional electoral court reported that 349 polling locations had lost electricity, although voting machines continued operating on backup batteries, according to local media.
Originally, voting was scheduled to end at 5pm Brasilia time (20:00 GMT).
But faced with the two campaigns’ petitions for an extension, Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin ordered polling stations to remain open for another two hours, until 7pm (22:00 GMT).
The decision, however, came after some stations had already closed and shut down their electronic voting machines.
Zanin later clarified that polling stations that had already closed would remain shut. Only those that were still open could continue accepting voters until 7pm.
The result was confusion over who could still vote, with some Brazilians turned away despite the extension.
In a brief post-election address, Bolsonaro pointed to those issues as a reason to annul the vote. He also accused Zanin of judicial malfeasance.
“He changes the rules of the game mid-game,” Bolsonaro said.
Election interference allegations raise prospect of legal challenges
Brazil’s Federal Police are investigating alleged election-related transport disruptions in five states.
In Salvador, a court ordered the arrest of the city’s transport secretary over allegations he had directed cuts to bus services. Lula’s camp pointed to such incidents as evidence of election interference.
Bolsonaro levelled similar allegations against Zanin, pointing to his history as Lula’s personal lawyer. Lula named Zanin to the Supreme Court in 2023.
“It is impossible to recognise the results of the election,” Bolsonaro told his supporters, calling the circumstances “unacceptable”.
He is likely to pursue a court challenge in an effort to overturn his defeat. Already, some figures on the global right have signalled their support.
Donald Trump Jr, the son of United States President Donald Trump, voiced outrage over the decision to extend the voting hours.
“If a conservative government in Brazil did this, everyone in the mainstream press in America would lose their minds, but I guess they’re just choosing to be silent because it’s all for the cause,” Trump Jr posted on social media.
The Trump administration has backed the Bolsonaro family, echoing its claims that Jair Bolsonaro, the former president, was subject to a political “witch-hunt” in the courts.
Flavio Bolsonaro has called for reforming Brazil’s courts in the aftermath of his father’s legal troubles. Earlier this month, Bolsonaro said that if he were elected, he would seek changes to Brazil’s Constitution to “re-democratise” the country.
Al Jazeera correspondent Monica Yanakiew signalled that the tensions between Brazil’s right wing and its court system are likely to re-emerge after Sunday’s election results.
“The judicial system itself is very divided,” Yanakiew said, pointing to rifts within the Supreme Court. “There will need to be a lot of political negotiation.”
Higher turnout may have helped Lula
Higher-than-expected turnout may have helped Lula win, according to Andrei Roman, the head of polling firm AtlasIntel, who cited a drop in voter abstention as one factor behind the president’s victory.
An estimated 33.4 million Brazilians stayed home during the October 4 first round, despite voting being compulsory for most adults. That amounted to about 21 percent of the electorate, the highest abstention rate in a general election since 1998.
The question now is how much of a difference those voters made. With more than 2.2 million votes separating the candidates in the first round, even a relatively small change in turnout could have mattered in the run-off.
The final turnout figures, particularly in each candidate’s strongholds, could help explain how Lula managed to turn the race around.
Lula also made last-ditch pitches in the final weeks of his campaign, designed to energise his working-class base. Among them was a promise to pursue free public transport on weekends.
Lula’s victory complicates Trump’s ambitions in Latin America
Lula’s victory comes amid a wave of right-wing electoral wins across Latin America, where Trump has sought to expand Washington’s influence.
The Bolsonaro family has long enjoyed Trump’s support. Reuters reported on Saturday that officials in Trump’s State Department had pushed for sanctions against Brazil as part of an effort to weaken Lula and return the Bolsonaro family to power.
Asked on Sunday whom he wanted to win, the US president would not name a candidate.
“I don’t want to get into that, but we are watching,” he told reporters.
Though Trump has been vocal in his support for other right-wing candidates in Latin America, he was relatively circumspect with regard to the Brazilian election, something critics have speculated was intentional.
While Bolsonaro has promised closer ties with the US, Lula made defending Brazil’s sovereignty and resisting foreign interference a central theme of his campaign.
He has often pointed to Trump’s aggressive tariff campaign and his public statements about the Jair Bolsonaro trial as evidence of foreign interference. Lula’s campaign has also clashed with US-based social media companies, prompting Trump to accuse his government of censorship.
In his victory speech, Lula described having to “overcome interference coming from the outside” in his bid for a fourth term.
“The election was a defeat for denialism,” Lula said on Sunday night. “It was a defeat for lies.”
He finished his speech by praising his “army” of supporters.
“I highly doubt that Russia, China, or the United States possess an army as victorious as the army of democracy in this country,” Lula said, thanking the voters.
