Twenty years after winning the Brazilian presidency, left-wing candidate Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, commonly known as “Lula,” defeated right-wing incumbent Jair Bolsonaro in a tightly contested election.
With 100% of the votes counted in the runoff election, Lula received 50.9% while Bolsonaro earned 49.1%. The country’s election authority has declared Lula’s victory a mathematical certainty.
The result is the country’s tightest election since its return to democracy in 1985 and the first time an incumbent president failed to win reelection. Just over 2 million votes separated the two candidates; the previous closest race, in 2014, was decided by around 3.5 million votes.
With 50% of votes counted, Bolsonaro held a narrow 0.5% lead, but as votes trickled in through the evening, the race started to swing towards Lula.
Just before 7 p.m., Lula took his first lead of the night with 72% of precincts reporting, and he only continued to expand his advantage.
Bolsonaro turned in a strong performance in the southern part of the country, winning Sao Paulo and his native Rio de Janeiro by over 10%. But it was not enough to overcome Lula’s strong support in Northeast Brazil, where his Workers Party has long enjoyed dominance.
Lula won numerous states in the region by 30% to 50%, turning in solid performances in the heavily-populated states of Bahia, Ceara, and his native Pernambuco.
It was expected that the runoff would be difficult for Bolsonaro, as Lula nearly won the October 2 first round outright, when he received 48% of the vote to Bolsonaro’s 43%.
Bolsonaro’s chances of winning were diminished more when both the third-place and fourth-place finishers in the first round threw their support behind Lula in the second round.
Lula, 77, has promised to appoint centrists and even some leaning to the right to his cabinet. However, he faces a challenge in the form of a highly polarized society where economic growth is predicted to slow, and inflation remains high.
“Today the only winner is the Brazilian people,” Lula said in a speech in downtown Sao Paulo. “This isn’t a victory of mine or the Workers’ Party, nor the parties that supported me in campaign. It’s the victory of a democratic movement that formed above political parties, personal interests and ideologies so that democracy came out victorious.”
In 2018, Lula was arrested and served 580 days in jail for his administration’s involvement in vast corruption revealed by sprawling investigations.
His arrest kept him out of that year’s race, which Bolsonaro won. However, his conviction was later overturned by Brazil’s Supreme Court, which found that the presiding judge over Lula’s case had been biased and colluded with prosecutors.
That enabled Lula, president from 2003-2010, to run for the nation’s highest office for the sixth time.
During his first run as president, Lula presided over an economic boom, leaving office with an approval rating above 80%, prompting then-U.S. President Barack Obama to call him “the most popular politician on Earth.”
Lula ran his campaign on promises to increase the number of taxpayer funds spent on the poor, reestablish relationships with foreign governments, and crack down on illegal tree-cutting in the Amazon rainforest.
Lula also promised to raise the minimum wage and institute a ministry for Brazil’s original peoples, which an Indigenous person will run.
It was not all bad news for Bolsonaro’s supporters, though, as the second most important race in the country, for Sao Paulo’s governorship, was won by Bolsonaro-backed candidate Tarcisio de Freitas.
Bolsonaro-backed candidates now control the governorship of the three largest states in Brazil.
A considerable number of Bolsonaro-aligned deputies and senators also remain in Brazil’s congress, which will likely push back against many of Lula’s proposals.
Lula will officially be inaugurated on January 1, 2023.