SÃO PAULO — Senator Flávio Bolsonaro and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva finished first and second in the opening round of Brazil’s presidential election Sunday to set up a rematch, of sorts.
Four years ago, the left-wing Lula unseated Bolsonaro’s right-wing father, then-president Jair Bolsonaro, by the narrowest margin in the country’s history. Jair Bolsonaro, an ally of President Donald Trump, refused to accept the result; his supporters stormed and vandalized Brazil’s presidential palace, Congress and Supreme Court in a Jan. 6-style assault.
Jair Bolsonaro was convicted last year of plotting a violent coup to stay in power after his defeat and sentenced to more than 27 years. From prison, he chose his oldest son to run in his place and, if he won, to grant him amnesty.
With 99.3 percent of ballots counted Sunday, Flávio Bolsonaro captured 47 percent of the vote to lead the first-round field of 12 candidates, electoral authorities reported. Lula finished second with 45 percent. Brazilians will return to the polls in three weeks to choose between them.
“The word is change,” a jubilant Bolsonaro told reporters Sunday evening in Brasília. “Brazil can’t take it anymore. The era of [Lula’s] Workers’ Party is hereby over, leaving behind a record of hopelessness.”
“Lula is fighting for power,” he said. “I’m fighting for Brazil.”
Lula, in São Paulo, said the result had surprised him, but he would close the gap in the coming weeks by comparing “the Brazil of uncertainty and a dark past with the Brazil of the future.”
“We never get everything we want,” the president said. “I confess that I was convinced I would win in the first round, but I had thought that before. The runoff is the moment of truth, the moment when we show the true picture of Brazil.”
At stake is whether Latin America’s largest country continues the region’s rightward shift, which has already brought Argentina, Colombia and other countries into closer cooperation with the Trump administration on narcotrafficking and other priorities, or remains South America’s last major holdout.
In a head-to-head contest, recent polls have shown Bolsonaro, 45, and Lula, 80, in a statistical tie.
Bolsonaro’s campaign was buoyed Sunday by an unexpectedly strong showing by conservatives in state and congressional races. He appeared to benefit from late defections from other right-wing candidates by voters intent on keeping Lula from winning reelection.
In a race that has been less about policies than personalities, one key issue here has been the possibility of Trump attempting to influence the vote. Trump did not endorse Bolsonaro, as he did his father in 2022. But he used tariffs and sanctions last year in a failed effort to pressure authorities to drop the prosecution against Jair Bolsonaro and welcomed Flávio at the White House. His State Department planned to send senior officials here to question the integrity of the electoral system (Lula’s administration said they would be denied visas).
Flávio Bolsonaro himself is under investigation after seeking millions of dollars from a banker accused in an alleged multibillion dollar fraud. Bolsonaro, who says he sought the money to finance a film aimed at polishing his father’s image, has denied wrongdoing. His supporters have attempted to blunt the effect on his campaign by highlighting messages from the banker to a Supreme Court justice they claim is a Lula ally and Bolsonaro nemesis.
Bolsonaro and Lula now have three weeks to persuade Brazilians who voted against them in the first round to support them in the second, set for Oct. 25. Polls have found that some 45 percent say they would not vote for Lula under any circumstances; 45 percent say the same about Bolsonaro.
“An election about change is very difficult for the incumbent,” said George Washington University economist Maurício Moura, founder of the polling firm Ideia. “Lula has to create the expectation that, in this case, change is bad.”
Here are five takeaways from Sunday’s vote.
What the voters said
Lula led in polls for most of the race, but Bolsonaro surged in recent weeks to close the gap.
The challenger led a motorcade of motorcycles Saturday to a campaign-closing rally in Americana, a city settled by immigrants from the former Confederacy after the American Civil War. He accused Supreme Court justices of working to reelect Lula. The court, he said, needs to “stop acting like a police station.”
Police officer Clayton Santos, 53, voting Sunday in São Paulo, said he supported Bolsonaro largely to defeat Lula and push back against corruption, including at the Supreme Court. “I don’t have a favorite candidate,” he said. “It could be anyone with a chance of beating Lula.”
Retiree Cláudio Gonzalez, 70, said Bolsonaro wasn’t his first choice, but would get his vote. “I wanted another name on the right,” he said. “I don’t think Flávio is the most prepared. But I prefer anyone to Lula.”
Lula, appearing 85 miles away Saturday in São Paulo, framed the election as a choice between “democracy and sovereignty” and “barbarism and corruption.”
Rúbia Monteiro, a 60-year-old teacher who attended Lula’s rally, said the left needs new leaders, but given the current choices, she’s backing the incumbent. “If Flávio Bolsonaro wins, he’ll be worse than his father, because he’ll ally himself with Trump, who wants our natural resources and wants to do to Brazil what he did to Venezuela.”
Retired subway worker Alessandra Fernandes Senra, 48, said she has always voted for Lula, but this time her vote is also about “safeguarding our democracy.”
“After what Jair Bolsonaro did, we know our democracy is at risk,” she said. She also praised Lula’s social policies. “I’m working class, and I want someone who looks out for working people.”
Bank worker Karen Carolina Guimarães, 41, has voted in previous elections for Lula, but now wants change. She intentionally cast an invalid ballot on Sunday. Now she’ll do some research, she said, and make her choice. “I’m going to think about which of the two will make my life better,” she said. “And that’s it.”
Change vs. fear of change
In the second round, voters will choose between two impulses: the desire for change and the fear of what that change might bring.
Lula, seeking an unprecedented fourth term — he served two from 2003 to 2010 before returning to office in 2023 — has campaigned on defending national sovereignty and democracy and making daily life more affordable. His challenge is that he ran on similar promises last time; since then, prices of food and fuel have remained stubbornly high and household debt has grown.
Speaking to The Washington Post in May, Lula acknowledged that when a democracy fails to meet people’s basic needs, it creates space for anti-system rhetoric. “Then any idiot who speaks against the system gets applause,” he said. “That’s happening all over the world.”
His campaign hopes recent measures addressing voters’ everyday concerns can win him more votes. In the past two weeks, Lula has announced debt relief for families, increased Brazil’s main cash-transfer program and moved to ban online gambling, which has pushed millions of Brazilians into debt.
“The question was whether Lula could withstand the powerful desire for change sweeping Brazil,” said campaign chief Edinho Silva, the president of Lula’s Workers’ Party.
Bolsonaro faces the opposite challenge: convincing voters who want change that electing him would not restore a movement that attacked democratic institutions.
At the outset of his campaign, he sought to portray himself as a more moderate version of his father, who as president downplayed the coronavirus pandemic and its more than 700,000 deaths in Brazil, pursued policies that alienated women, Black and Indigenous people, and was convicted of attempting the violent abolition of the democratic rule of law.
“You’re going to see a different Bolsonaro,” he told The Post in April. “The Bolsonaro you’ve always wanted.”
But as Lula opened a lead in polls, Bolsonaro moved sharply to the right, appealing to his father’s base with a hardline agenda on crime and security. He proposed chemical castration for rapists, reducing the age of criminal responsibility for the most heinous crimes to 14 and building prisons modeled on those of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele.
Convincing voters to turn out
In this deeply polarized country, much of the electorate is split between two political movements but not necessarily enthusiastic about either.
Those who supported losing candidates in the first round could prove particularly difficult to win over: Their votes were, in many cases, a rejection of both Lula and Bolsonaro.
In the runoff, some could choose a third option: staying home.
“There will be a huge effort by both candidates to go after voters who did not vote for either of them in the first round,” said Moura, the economist and pollster. “But a large part of them may simply decide not to vote.”
Voting for Brazilians aged 18 to 70 is compulsory; failing to vote can draw a fine and temporarily restrict access to some government services and documents. Historically, higher abstention has tended to hurt Lula’s Workers’ Party, whose voters are disproportionately poorer, include many older than 70 and are more likely to live farther from polling places.
Turnout on Sunday was 78.9 percent, electoral authorities said.
What will Trump do?
A central of the election has been how far the Trump administration might go to influence the contest. Trump is politically allied with the Bolsonaros but has also praised Lula as “a good man” and “a smart guy.”
Trump last week called the election “very important” and said he was following it “very closely.” He has not endorsed a candidate, but his administration has taken several economic and diplomatic steps urged by and benefitting the Bolsonaros.
In addition to imposing tariffs on Brazilian goods and sanctions on key officials, taking pictures with Bolsonaro and attempting to undermine faith in electoral integrity, his administration has designated Brazil’s two largest criminal groups as terrorist organizations. Flávio Bolsonaro, who pushed for the designation, has used it to show the utility of his relationship with the U.S. president while bolstering his tough-on-crime credentials.
The State Department last month called any suggestion the United States was trying to influence the election “a baseless lie.” Brazilian intelligence has called the risk of U.S. interference “critical.”
Now, Brazilian officials are watching to see the effect of the first-round results on the administration’s plans. One official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the subject publicly, said the outcome could help the Trump administration “recalibrate whether it goes all-in or hands-off.”
Lula’s aides don’t expect Trump to challenge Brazil’s electronic voting system, but say they worry about other forms of interference, including possible financial support or the use of U.S.-based technology platforms to amplify political messages.
Lula has seized on fears of U.S. intervention to cast himself as the defender of Brazilian sovereignty against foreign pressure.
There’s been little debate over policy or ideas
In a campaign focused on fears of U.S. interference, the Banco Master scandal and even false claims that Bolsonaro would replace Brazil’s patron saint, there has been little debate over policy or ideas.
Lula began the campaign as the favorite but has struggled to turn his record into a compelling case for another term. The aid measures of the past two weeks have yet to make a tangible difference in people’s finances or sense of economic well-being.
Flávio, meanwhile, campaigned on a hardline approach to crime while trying to shift attention from the bank scandal.
Bolsonaro isn’t the only prominent figure to have a relationship with jailed banker Daniel Vorcaro. Released last month in the investigation were messages from Vorcaro seeking advice from Justice Alexandre de Moraes, whose wife’s law firm has done legal work for him. (Moraes says he never saw Vorcaro’s messages and has called their release illegal and politically motivated. Vorcaro’s lawyers declined to comment.)
Moraes presided over Jair Bolsonaro’s conviction and has tried social media users accused of attempting to undermine democracy. Flávio Bolsonaro has tried to tie him to Lula and portray both as part of a corrupt political establishment.
The scandal has promoted a sense among voters that everyone is corrupt and a campaign characterized less by excitement than exhaustion. That’s a sharp contrast with 2022, when Lula successfully framed the race as a choice between democracy and authoritarianism.
Moura expects the second round to turn on the economy and voters’ daily lives.
“If the runoff becomes a war of destroying the other side, it will drive away voters who reject both candidates,” he said. “The economic sentiment needs to prevail.”
The post Bolsonaro and Lula head to runoff: 5 takeaways from Brazil’s election appeared first on Washington Post.
