Lula Wins Brazil Election: Fourth Term Sealed in Historic Runoff Comeback

Brazil has reelected Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to the presidency, handing the 80-year-old leftist an unprecedented fourth term in one of the most dramatic election results in the country’s modern history. Lula defeated right-wing Senator Flávio Bolsonaro in Sunday’s runoff, overturning a first-round defeat and defying final polls that had put his rival narrowly ahead.

Brazil’s electoral authority, the Superior Electoral Court, declared Lula the winner. With 98.76 percent of votes counted, Lula held 51.75 percent of valid votes to 48.25 percent for Bolsonaro — about 63 million ballots to 58.8 million, a margin of more than 4.2 million votes. It was the first time since direct presidential elections returned in Brazil in 1989 that a candidate who finished second in the first round went on to win the runoff.

The victory makes Lula the first Brazilian president ever elected to the office four times. He turns 81 on Tuesday and will be sworn in on January 5, 2027. The result is also a sharp setback for the Bolsonaro movement and for Latin America’s rightward wave, denying a crucial victory to a candidate closely allied with United States President Donald Trump.

Election Results: How Lula Turned a First-Round Defeat Into Victory

Three weeks ago, the contest looked lost for Lula. In the first round on October 4, Bolsonaro won 47.03 percent of valid votes to Lula’s 45.16 percent, a gap of roughly 2.2 million ballots that gave the challenger’s campaign the momentum heading into the runoff. No candidate in Brazil’s modern democratic history had ever come back from a first-round loss to win the presidency, and the final opinion polls suggested the pattern would hold: on the eve of the runoff, both Datafolha and Quaest put Bolsonaro ahead, 51 percent to 49 percent.

Lula’s campaign responded to the first-round blow with a wholesale reset. The president revamped his social media operation, turning to video selfies and direct-to-camera appeals, and bought his first cellphone. His supporters staged massive rallies under the banner “Never Again Bolsonaro.”

When the votes were counted, the comeback was built on the same base that has carried Lula through seven presidential campaigns. He first ran for the office in 1989, losing three elections before winning in 2002. He was re-elected in 2006, returned to power in 2022 after spending more than 18 months in jail on corruption convictions that were later annulled on procedural grounds, and on Sunday he won his seventh presidential election. His stronghold remained the northeast, the region where he was born and where his social welfare programs are most deeply felt.

In São Paulo, the result was greeted with cheers from apartment windows and blaring car horns. Voter turnout told part of the story: abstention in the runoff was 19 percent, one of the lowest rates on record, after more than 33 million of Brazil’s nearly 160 million registered voters stayed away in the first round.

World News: A Turbulent Election Day and the Two-Hour Extension

The runoff was decided on a day of heavy rain and administrative chaos that may yet shape what comes next. Persistent downpours fell across much of Brazil on Sunday, and reports emerged during the day that public transportation had been suspended in some areas, prompting allegations of voter suppression.

Both campaigns petitioned the courts for more time. Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin granted a request from Lula’s campaign, which cited “incidents” affecting buses carrying voters to polling venues in several states. Bolsonaro’s campaign had also requested an extension in some areas, citing heavy rain.

The extension order arrived minutes after voting had officially ended at 5 p.m. local time, and no court in Brazil had ever extended voting before. Justice Zanin — who was Lula’s lawyer before joining the court in 2023 — acted on a complaint from the Lula campaign that cities in Bahia run by allies of Flávio Bolsonaro had kept buses in depots. Bolsonaro’s lawyers had separately asked the electoral court to extend voting in 17 flooded municipalities across three states.

The mechanics of the extension created an uneven picture on the ground. Many polling stations had already shut their electronic voting machines when the order arrived, and the system does not allow a closed machine to be reopened. The electoral court then said only stations still open should keep receiving voters until 7 p.m. Brasília time. Some voters were sent home at 5 p.m. while others cast ballots until 7 p.m.

Al Jazeera’s live coverage noted that legal challenges are likely, as the voting extension adds tension to Brazil’s polarized political landscape. Either campaign could cite the split voting hours to seek an annulment, and any such request would go to the electoral court, which is chaired by Kassio Nunes Marques — Jair Bolsonaro’s first appointee to the Supreme Court.

What Decided the Race: Cost of Living, Crime and Corruption

The campaign was dominated by three concerns that cut across Brazil’s divides: the cost of living, crime and corruption. Voters told reporters in the final days that supermarket prices had become the defining issue of the race.

Lula’s case for a fourth term rested on the record of his third. An analysis published in September by the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research found that between 2022 and 2025 the Brazilian economy grew by a cumulative 8.9 percent, easily outpacing the average rate of growth in other South American countries. Unemployment fell from more than 9 percent in the second quarter of 2022 to 5.4 percent in the second quarter of 2026. Poverty and food insecurity fell sharply, and in 2025 Brazil was removed from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s Hunger Map after chronic undernourishment fell below 2.5 percent. Deforestation of the Amazon has fallen to its lowest level in four decades under Lula.

But the economic record did not settle the argument. Voters complained about the high cost of living and a sense of insecurity, and Lula’s expansion of welfare programs during the campaign became a point of tension, with critics arguing the government needs to rein in spending. High interest rates and online betting apps remain drags on household finances — Lula has pledged to ban the betting apps starting next month.

Bolsonaro, a senator since 2019, presented himself as more moderate than his firebrand father while campaigning on fiscal discipline: slashing state spending, tougher crime policies including extended prison sentences and chemical castration for men found guilty of rape, and strengthening ties with Israel and the United States. He vowed that if elected, his first act would be to free his father, who is serving a 27-year sentence for attempting a coup after his 2022 election loss. He also promised to dedicate the nation to “the Lord Jesus Christ,” an appeal to religious conservatives. Days before the runoff, a group of Brazilian bishops warned in Folha de S. Paulo that Bolsonaro “threatens democracy, national sovereignty, and the common good.”

The younger Bolsonaro’s own record drew scrutiny during the campaign. He was under investigation over the financing of “Dark Horse,” a biopic about his father, and was forced to admit he had asked jailed banker Daniel Vorcaro — at the heart of one of Brazil’s largest financial fraud cases — to bankroll the film.

Trump News: A Setback for Washington’s Latin America Strategy

The result reverberates well beyond Brazil’s borders. Flávio Bolsonaro is an ally of Donald Trump, and his defeat is a major setback for the Bolsonaro political movement — with Flávio failing to accomplish what his father also could not do in 2022: defeat Lula at the ballot box. It also marks a defeat for the rightward shift across Latin America that has enjoyed Trump’s support since he returned to office in January 2025, with right-wing leaders sweeping recent races in Peru, Colombia, Argentina, Bolivia and Ecuador.

Brazil’s vote bucks that trend, keeping Latin America’s largest country and economy out of the group of Trump-aligned governments that now includes Argentina, Chile and Colombia. Reporting ahead of the vote noted that 10 current and former US officials told Reuters that two State Department appointees had led a campaign to return the Bolsonaro family to power.

The result also frustrates Washington’s bid to curb Beijing’s presence in Latin America: Lula’s government has overseen record Chinese investment, and Brazil is Beijing’s biggest destination for capital in the region. Lula, for his part, made Brazilian sovereignty a central plank of his campaign, warning Trump not to “meddle” in his country’s elections. His platform looks outward to the global South: deeper involvement with developing nations, expanded environmental protections, and expanded welfare programs at home, including cutting the standard work week from 44 to 40 hours without reducing salaries and introducing free public transport.

What Happens Next: Inauguration, Legal Challenges and a Divided Country

Lula begins his fourth term on January 5, 2027. Between now and then, the transition will unfold against a polarized backdrop. The first question is whether the Bolsonaro campaign accepts the result or challenges it in the electoral court over the two-hour voting extension. The second is the shape of the Congress Lula will face: he takes a fourth term into a legislature built against him, where the opposition holds powerful blocs and where his agenda — expanded welfare spending, the betting ban, the shorter work week — will meet resistance from lawmakers who favor fiscal restraint.

The new president will also inherit the issues that dominated the campaign and were not resolved by it. The cost of living remains the most immediate pressure on Brazilian households, even as inflation and unemployment have fallen. Crime and public safety were central to Bolsonaro’s appeal, and Lula will be judged on whether his government can answer the sense of insecurity that drove millions of voters toward his rival.

For Lula, the victory caps one of the most remarkable careers in democratic politics: a former metalworkers’ union leader who lost three presidential elections, won two terms, spent more than a year and a half in prison, returned to the presidency in 2022, and has now won a fourth term by overturning a first-round defeat no Brazilian candidate had ever overturned before.

Source: Reuters, CNN, Al Jazeera, Wall Street Journal, South China Morning Post