Lula Claims Fourth Presidency After 51-48 Runoff Win

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has won the Brazilian presidency.

The 80-year-old leftist secured a record fourth non-consecutive term in Sunday’s runoff, defeating right-wing Senator Flavio Bolsonaro. Electoral authorities declared Lula the winner once 98.76 percent of ballots were counted. He took more than 51 percent of the vote to Bolsonaro’s 48 percent.

The result completes a comeback that no Brazilian presidential candidate has achieved in nearly four decades. In the first round on October 4, Bolsonaro led with 47.03 percent of the vote compared to Lula’s 45.16 percent. That margin represented a gap of 2.2 million votes. Polls in the days before the runoff showed the two men virtually tied. The outcome remained uncertain until the final tallies arrived from the northeast, a region that serves as a long-time stronghold for Lula and his Workers’ Party.

The voting process was disrupted by a late decision to extend the polls. Both campaigns requested additional time. Lula’s team argued that local officials cut public transport in several cities, making it difficult for lower-income voters to reach polling stations. Bolsonaro’s campaign cited heavy rain and flooding as reasons for the extension. In Minas Gerais, the regional electoral court reported that 349 polling locations lost electricity, though voting machines continued to operate on backup batteries.

Voting was scheduled to end at 5 p.m. Brasilia time. Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin ordered stations to remain open until 7 p.m., but the order arrived after some locations had already closed and shut down their machines. Zanin later clarified that stations already closed would stay closed. The delay caused confusion, and some voters were turned away despite the extension.

Bolsonaro has pledged to annul the vote and accused Zanin of judicial malfeasance. He noted that Zanin served as Lula’s personal lawyer before the leftist appointed him to the Supreme Court in 2023. “He changes the rules of the game mid-game,” Bolsonaro said. He also stated that it is impossible to recognize the election results. Brazil’s Federal Police are investigating alleged transport disruptions in five states. A court in Salvador ordered the arrest of the city’s transport secretary over claims that he directed bus service cuts. Donald Trump Jr, son of the U.S. president, also criticized the extension on social media.

Turnout appears to have influenced the outcome. Andrei Roman, head of polling firm AtlasIntel, cited a drop in abstention as a factor in Lula’s victory. In the first round, an estimated 33.4 million Brazilians, about 21 percent of the electorate, stayed home. That represented the highest abstention rate in a general election since 1998. Lula made late appeals to his working-class base, including a promise to pursue free public transport on weekends.

The result complicates the ambitions of U.S. President Donald Trump in Latin America, where right-wing candidates have recently won elections. Reuters reported on Saturday that State Department officials pushed for sanctions against Brazil to weaken Lula and return the Bolsonaro family to power. When asked on Sunday whom he wanted to win, Trump said, “I don’t want to get into that, but we are watching.”

Lula built his campaign around defending Brazilian sovereignty, citing Trump’s tariffs and remarks on Jair Bolsonaro’s trial as foreign interference. In his victory speech, he said he had to overcome interference coming from the outside. “The election was a defeat for denialism,” he said. “It was a defeat for lies.”