Leftist Lula wins Brazil’s presidential election
RIO DE JANEIRO — Twenty years after first winning the Brazilian presidency, leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has done it again, defeating incumbent Jair Bolsonaro on Sunday in an extremely tight election that marks an about-face for the country after four years of far-right politics.
With more than 99% of the votes tallied in the runoff, Da Silva, who is known as Lula, had 50.9%, and Bolsonaro had 49.1%.
The election authority said Da Silva’s victory was a mathematical certainty.
It was a stunning reversal for Da Silva, 77, whose 2018 imprisonment over a corruption scandal sidelined him from the election that brought Bolsonaro, a defender of conservative social values, to power.
“Today the only winner is the Brazilian people,” Da Silva said in a speech at a hotel in downtown Sao Paulo. “This isn’t a victory of mine or the Workers’ Party, nor the parties that supported me in [my] campaign. It’s the victory of a democratic movement that formed above political parties, personal interests and ideologies so that democracy came out victorious.”
Da Silva is promising to restore the country’s more prosperous past and to govern beyond his leftist Workers’ Party. He wants to bring in centrists and even some leaning to the right who voted for him for the first time. Yet he faces headwinds in a politically polarized society where economic growth is slowing and inflation is soaring.
His victory marks the first time since Brazil’s 1985 return to democracy that the sitting president has failed to win reelection.
The election in Latin America’s biggest economy extended a wave of recent leftist victories in the region, including in Chile, Colombia and Argentina.
As Da Silva spoke to his supporters — promising to “govern a country in a very difficult situation” — Bolsonaro had yet to concede.
It was the country’s closest election in more than three decades. Just over 2 million votes separated the two candidates with 99.5% of the vote counted. The previous closest race, in 2014, was decided by a margin of 3.46 million.
Da Silva’s inauguration is scheduled to take place Jan. 1. He last served as president from 2003 to 2010.
Thomas Traumann, an independent political analyst, compared the results to President Biden’s 2020 victory, saying Da Silva is inheriting a divided nation.
“The huge challenge that Lula has will be to pacify the country,” he said. “People are not only polarized on political matters but also have different values, identity and opinions. What’s more, they don’t care what the other side’s values, identities and opinions are.”
Congratulations for Da Silva — and for Brazil — began to pour in from around the world Sunday evening, including from Biden, who highlighted the country’s “free, fair, and credible elections.” The European Union congratulated Da Silva in a statement, commending the electoral authority for its effectiveness and transparency throughout the campaign.
Polls closed at 5 p.m. nationwide. Because the vote was conducted electronically, the results came quickly.
Voting stations in the capital, Brasilia, were crowded by early in the day. At one, retired government worker Luiz Carlos Gomes said he would vote for Da Silva.
“He’s the best for the poor, especially in the countryside,” said Gomes, 65, who hails from Maranhao state in the northeast of Brazil. “We were always starving before him.”
Most opinion polls had given a lead to Da Silva, though analysts agreed that the race grew increasingly tight in recent weeks.
For months, it appeared that Da Silva was headed for easy victory as he kindled nostalgia for his 2003-10 presidency, when Brazil’s economy was booming and welfare helped tens of millions join the middle class.
But while Da Silva topped the Oct. 2 first-round elections with 48% of the vote, Bolsonaro was a strong second at 43%, showing that opinion polls had significantly underestimated the incumbent’s popularity. Many Brazilians support Bolsonaro’s defense of conservative social values, and he shored up support with vast government spending.
More than 150 million Brazilians were eligible to vote, yet about 20% abstained in the first round.
Both Da Silva and Bolsonaro focused their efforts on driving turnout for the runoff election. Almost 400 cities made public transportation free on election day, according to the nonprofit Free Fares for Democracy, and the electoral authority prohibited federal highway police from inhibiting voters’ passage on public transit.
Still, there were multiple reports of checkpoints. The newspaper Folha de S.Paulo reported that highway police had stopped more than 500 buses as of 12:35 p.m. local time — a 70% increase from stops during the firstround vote — citing documents and internal data. The head of the election authority ordered police to cease the actions. The Workers’ Party filed a request for the police director’s arrest.
Human Rights Watch, an international nonprofit, said it was “very concerned” about the reports of roadway operations and confusion on public transit.
During the campaign, the candidates presented few proposals for Brazil’s future beyond affirming that they would continue a welfare program for the poor, despite limited funding.
On the eve of the election, Bolsonaro shared video on Twitter of his endorsement by former U.S. President Trump, who said Bolsonaro has secured for Brazil respect on the world stage. Da Silva has criticized Bolsonaro for the nation’s fallen stature abroad, highlighting the dearth of state visits and bilateral meetings.
“Don’t lose him, don’t let that happen,” Trump said in the video. “It would not be good for your country. I love your country, but it would not be good. So get out and vote for President Bolsonaro. He’s doing the job like few people could.”
Bolsonaro’s four years in office have been marked by conservatism and defense of traditional Christian values. He claimed that his rival’s return to power would usher in communism, legalized drugs, abortion and the persecution of churches — none of which occurred during Da Silva’s earlier eight years in office.
On Sunday, Livia Correia and her husband, Pedro, brought their two kids to a voting station in Rio’s Copacabana neighborhood.
Correia, 36, said she voted for Bolsonaro because he defends the things she holds dear: “family values, God and freedom of expression.”
Da Silva homed in on Bolsonaro’s widely criticized handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and said the president failed to care for society’s neediest. He also painted Bolsonaro as an opponent of the Amazon rainforest who defanged environmental authorities and presided over a surge in deforestation.
But for many, the record of Da Silva’s Workers’ Party was equally off-putting. A sprawling investigation revealed the party’s involvement in corruption scandals that ensnared top politicians and executives.
Da Silva himself was imprisoned for 19 months for corruption and money laundering. The Supreme Court annulled his convictions in 2019, on the grounds that the judge was biased and colluded with prosecutors. That did not stop Bolsonaro from reminding voters of the convictions.
The president’s digital mobilization was on display as his campaign introduced unproven claims of electoral manipulation. That revived fears that Bolsonaro could challenge the election results — much like Trump, whom he admires, has done.
For months, Bolsonaro has claimed that the nation’s electronic voting machines are prone to fraud, though he never presented evidence, even after the electoral authority set a deadline for him to do so.
More recently, Bolsonaro’s campaign claimed that radio stations may have hurt the president by failing to air more than 150,000 political advertisements.