Brazil’s heated presidential election was forced into a runoff on Sunday, according to election officials, with the right-wing challenger leading over the leftist incumbent in a race that may have sweeping consequences far beyond the country.
The challenger, Flávio Bolsonaro, received 47.3 percent of the vote, compared with 44.8 percent for President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. With over 95 percent of the ballots counted, neither succeeded in capturing the more than the 50 percent needed for outright victory.
The two candidates will now face each other head-on in an Oct. 25 runoff. But Mr. Bolsonaro, son of a former president imprisoned for attempting a coup after losing the last election, appeared to be closing in on his goal.
If Mr. Bolsonaro ousts Mr. Lula in the runoff, it will mark the biggest win yet for Latin America’s ascendant right. It will also usher in to power an enthusiastic Trump administration ally who has signaled that he is willing to help Washington advance its goal of dominance in the region.
Candidates aligned with President Trump on issues like fighting drug gangs and “woke ideology” have won the last seven elections in the region, with Brazil the biggest remaining prize.
If Mr. Lula succeeds in rebounding from Sunday’s setback, it may been seen as a rebuke to the Latin American right. If nothing else, a Lula victory would slow the right’s spectacular march across the continent and complicate Mr. Trump’s plans.
As many other Latin American leaders fall into line, Mr. Lula has repeatedly defied Mr. Trump, warning him not to meddle in his country’s affairs.
For months, expectations loomed large that Mr. Trump, who has waded into other regional elections, might try to influence the Brazilian vote. While he did not endorse Mr. Bolsonaro, his administration did work to lift him in more subtle ways.
With the runoff just weeks away, Mr. Lula and Mr. Bolsonaro must now race to capture millions more votes. Key to that will be the roughly 8 percent of voters who backed a range of other candidates on Sunday. Those candidates drew only single-digit support.
Analysts expect a majority of those voters, most of whom backed third-party candidates on the right of the political spectrum, to now shift their support to Mr. Bolsonaro.
If Mr. Lula stands a chance of turning the race around, he will have to persuade some of the millions of voters who stayed home or spoiled their ballots to lend him support. In Brazil, where voting is mandatory for most between the ages of 18 and 70, about 20 percent of voters chose to abstain from casting a ballot on Sunday.
Lula versus Bolsonaro 2.0
The choice before Brazilian voters is a familiar one: Mr. Lula pitted against a Bolsonaro.
Mr. Lula has framed his candidacy as a vote for democracy and the only way to bar the return of the Bolsonaro family to power, four years after the Jair Bolsonaro tried to cling to office after losing the last election.
The younger Mr. Bolsonaro has said that, if elected, he will seek amnesty for his father and the right-wing rioters who were handed jail sentences for storming government buildings in January 2023, in an episode reminiscent of the attack on the U.S. Capitol. His father was sentenced to 27 years in prison.
Pledging revenge against the institutions that convicted his father, Mr. Bolsonaro has also vowed to impeach Supreme Court justices and overhaul the judiciary, which his movement accuses of censoring conservative voices. With a corruption scandal battering the court, Mr. Bolsonaro’s message has appeared to resonate with some voters disillusioned with the institution.
At the same time, his own links to that multibillion-dollar fraud scandal have dampened enthusiasm around his candidacy. Mr. Bolsonaro was placed under investigation after raising millions of dollars for a biopic about his father from a disgraced banker at the center of the scandal.
The next president will have unusually broad powers to shape Brazil’s top court by filling up to four seats freed by justices who hit the mandatory retirement age.
The path forward
The choice for Brazilian voters could hardly be starker.
Mr. Lula, 80, is a stalwart of leftist Brazilian politics seeking his fourth term in office. Mr. Bolsonaro, a 45-year-old right-wing senator, is running in the shadow of his father.
Mr. Lula is popular with women, Catholics and lower-income voters who credit him with reducing poverty and inequality. Mr. Bolsonaro, who has railed against “woke” policies, enjoys fervent support among evangelicals and higher-income Brazilians.
On public security, which is a top concern among Brazilians, Mr. Bolsonaro has vowed hard-line policies, like those adopted by his regional allies. He has promised to label drug gangs as terrorist groups and to build five maximum security prisons modeled on El Salvador’s.
Many voters blame Mr. Lula for the advance of criminal groups across the country. He has argued that the key to dismantling such groups is targeting their weapons and finances, not military might.
Under Mr. Lula, Amazon deforestation has fallen by roughly half. Mr. Bolsonaro, on the other hand, has said that he does not believe in climate change and promised to make it easier to farm and mine on Indigenous land.
Mr. Bolsonaro may now try to convince voters that he would be a more moderate than his father was. Mr. Lula will have to win over those dissatisfied with how he has been tackling a variety of domestic challenges, among them rising debt and eroding affordability.
Before the election, seeking to protect his slim lead in the polls, Mr. Lula spent heavily on welfare and expanded a debt-relief program. Days before the vote, he banned online betting, which has accelerated Brazil’s spiraling debt crisis, and promised to push forward a legislative proposal to cut back a six-day workweek.
On Sunday, it appeared these efforts had fallen short in convincing Brazilian voters to stick with him.
Even without picking a candidate, Mr. Trump has been a central figure in the election.
In urging voters to reject Mr. Bolsonaro, Mr. Lula painted him as a puppet of the United States. And he accused the Trump administration of trying to sway the vote so that it can seize Brazil’s vast natural resources. “Brazil is nobody’s backyard,” he told supporters on the campaign trail.
He also cast himself as a guardian of Brazil’s sovereignty, and stood up to Mr. Trump when he tried, through tariffs and sanctions, to help the elder Mr. Bolsonaro avoid prison for the coup attempt.
Amid concerns over American meddling, Brazil stepped up monitoring of foreign interference and tried to shield its electronic voting systems from unfounded doubts over their credibility.
The Trump administration has rejected claims that it is seeking to interfere, even as it tried this summer to send a U.S. delegation to investigate Brazil’s electoral integrity. After aggressive lobbying by Mr. Bolsonaro and his allies, the United States also labeled Brazil’s two largest drug gangs as terrorist groups.
- Credits: The New York Times
- Authors: Ana Ionova and Adam B. Ellick
- Photo: Victor Moriyama
