Turnout Shift Delivers Brazil's Presidency to Lula, Reversing First-Round Deficit

The core conflict was the reversal of a three-week deficit. On Sunday, with nearly 99% of ballots counted, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva held 51.75% of the vote against 48.25% for 45-year-old challenger Flávio Bolsonaro, finishing 4.3 million votes ahead. That followed a first-round result in early October where Lula trailed by 2.2 million votes.

The mechanism was turnout. The first round recorded a 21.08% abstention rate, a figure that weighed against Lula because his supporters tend to live farther from polling stations. Abstention fell to 19.21% in the runoff. No candidate who finished second in the opening round has won the subsequent runoff since Brazil returned to democracy in the 1980s.

Lula, who turns 81 on Tuesday, began his career as a union leader in the industrial suburbs of São Paulo in the late 1970s. He lost presidential bids in 1989, 1994 and 1998 before winning in 2002. He returned to the presidency in 2022 against Jair Bolsonaro, the father of this year's challenger.

The result carries consequences for the Bolsonaro family. Jair Bolsonaro is serving a 27-year sentence for plotting a coup and is under house arrest in Brasília, where his son watched the count. He had hoped to be freed and given a government role if his son won. Reginaldo Lopes, a Lula ally, said the country would now "reorganize the democratic forces."

The outcome also affects US President Donald Trump, described in the source as the Bolsonaro family's most important international ally. Trump had anticipated Brazil joining a group of aligned leaders in the region that includes Abelardo de la Espriella in Colombia, Daniel Noboa in Ecuador, José Antonio Kast in Chile and Javier Milei in Argentina.

Rallies preceded the vote. More than a million people gathered on Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro on Saturday, and a larger crowd marched on Paulista Avenue in São Paulo. On Sunday evening, hundreds returned to Paulista Avenue to watch the count, waving red flags bearing the president's face. "This is democracy," said Camilo Buarque, 35. An alleged effort by pro-Bolsonaro politicians to disrupt public transport in Lula-leaning areas failed.