World

Lula Falls Short in First Round, Bolsonaro Leads to Runoff

By Shobhan Saxena

On Sunday night, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who was seeking a record fourth term as Brazil’s president, was unable to secure an outright victory in the first round of the presidential election. Lula trailed his challenger Flávio Bolsonaro by about 1.8 percentage points, or 2.2 million votes. Bolsonaro also fell short of the 50% threshold required for an immediate win, so the contest will move to a second round on October 25. The result places Lula’s campaign in a more difficult position than expected, while Bolsonaro enters the runoff with the advantage of having finished first.

Flávio, the eldest son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, declared that Brazilians were demanding change. “It is the end of the era of the Workers Party (PT); it is a big change in our country,” he told reporters in Brasília. Lula, speaking to supporters in São Paulo, acknowledged the unexpected outcome. “I confess to you that I was convinced I would win the election in the first round,” he said. He added that the second round would be a new campaign, giving voters a direct choice between the two candidates and their visions.

Political analysts note that the runoff is effectively a new election that could go either way, but the current momentum favors the right. The results for Congress, the Senate and state governors also reflected a broad rightward shift. Candidates from the Liberal Party (PL), associated with the Bolsonaro family, broke voting records in the Chamber of Deputies, emerged as the dominant force in the Senate, and made significant gains in state assemblies. Flávio’s supporters also account for a majority of the governors elected in the first round.

The PL’s growth is notable because it has expanded its base by drawing support from traditional conservative and centre‑right voters, rather than from Lula’s Workers Party. With 19 senators elected, the PL will increase its representation from 15 to 28 seats in February 2027, making it the second‑largest single‑party bloc in the Senate since Brazil’s return to democracy.

Another factor in Flávio’s strong performance was the evangelical vote, which has increasingly consolidated behind the Bolsonaro family. In municipalities with a high concentration of evangelicals, Flávio won 52% of the valid votes. The contrast was even sharper in municipalities with the highest concentration of Catholics, where Lula’s share fell by 11 percentage points compared with his previous performance. The controversy surrounding Nossa Senhora Aparecida, Brazil’s patron saint, also became a political issue during the campaign.

Both campaigns now face the challenge of broadening their appeal beyond their core constituencies. Flávio is expected to make anti‑PT sentiment the central theme of his strategy, seeking to attract supporters of other right‑wing candidates who did not advance to the second round and to reach the roughly 40 million Brazilians who either abstained or cast blank or invalid ballots. His campaign has already secured political support in five states where gubernatorial races will go to a second round, compared with four for Lula, giving the Bolsonaro camp an additional network of state‑level allies.

Lula has identified abstention as one of his biggest targets for the second round. More than 33 million Brazilians did not vote in the first round, the highest abstention rate since 1998. “We are going to appeal to the people who did not vote,” Lula said, urging them to return to the polls because their vote would be crucial in deciding the country’s future.

For Lula, the challenge now is to prevent the election from becoming a referendum on the PT while rebuilding the broader coalition that carried him back to the presidency in 2022. Some reports suggest that in his seventh presidential campaign, Lula was surrounded by people who were reluctant to challenge him or tell him what he did not want to hear. If accurate, the problem would be the absence of advisors willing to point out when his strategy was no longer working.

Lula has long claimed that he knows how to speak to ordinary Brazilians. As the Sunday result puts his instinct to its biggest test, he will need to draw on all his experience to reconnect with voters beyond his traditional base and to win the contest that could determine not only his presidency but also his political legacy.