Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva remains president of Brazil. According to official results from the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), he won 51.79 per cent of valid votes in Sunday's runoff, against 48.21 per cent for Senator Flávio Bolsonaro. The margin is 4,430,191 votes. Lula is the first candidate since direct presidential elections were restored in 1989 to win despite finishing second in the first round. Flávio Bolsonaro has not accepted the result and announced that he will seek to have the election annulled (Reuters).
What happened between the two rounds
After the first round on 4 October, things looked good for Flávio Bolsonaro. He led by 2.2 million votes, and within four days three of the four strongest defeated candidates had come out in his support: Romeu Zema (Novo), Ronaldo Caiado (PSD) and Augusto Cury (Avante). The fourth, Renan Santos of the Missão movement, made no recommendation to his voters (A Crítica). Flávio Bolsonaro was also backed by the parties of the so-called centrão, the large centrist bloc without which no one can govern in Brazil's Congress.
Lula, by contrast, admitted that his first-round campaign had been the worst organised since 1989. He replaced its leadership and within three weeks announced a series of measures that the news agency Estadão Conteúdo summed up as a "package of goodies": a 15 per cent increase in the Bolsa Família social benefit, a ban on online betting, a new debt-relief scheme, an end to the six-day working week and a constitutional amendment to introduce free public transport at weekends (Times Brasil/Estadão). According to Reuters, the Bolsa Família increase is already being paid out; free transport still has to pass Congress, and the government has not yet said how it will pay for it.
Flávio Bolsonaro's campaign, meanwhile, was dealing with a scandal. On 16 October the news site Intercept Brasil reported that the campaign had paid 600,000 reais to Elytron, a company that had offered an artificial intelligence system in the United States for covertly influencing elections (Intercept Brasil). The article offered no proof that the system had been used, and the campaign says it ordered nothing illegal. According to political scientist Marco Antônio Teixeira of the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV), however, the scandals did not hurt either candidate, because both had almost exhausted their pool of potential voters (BBC News Brasil/Terra).
In the end, the result was decided by people who had not voted in the first round or had cast an invalid ballot. 2,960,239 more people went to the polls than three weeks earlier, and turnout rose from 78.92 to 80.78 per cent. The daily Poder360 described this as the largest drop in abstention between rounds in history (Poder360). At the same time, the number of blank and invalid ballots fell by 1.8 million.
Simple arithmetic shows that the new votes must have come from somewhere other than the defeated candidates. Between the two rounds Lula added 10.4 million votes and Flávio Bolsonaro 3.7 million. All ten eliminated candidates together received 9.3 million votes in the first round. Even if every one of their voters had switched to Lula and none had stayed at home, it would not have been enough to account for his gain – and nobody would then have been left to switch to Flávio Bolsonaro.
The results do not show directly how many voters moved to whom. Economist Daniel Schteingart of the analysis site The Atlas estimated it by comparing the results of individual polling stations in both rounds: by his reckoning, Augusto Cury's voters preferred Lula by roughly 54 to 34 per cent, even though Cury had endorsed Flávio Bolsonaro. Caiado's voters split 50 to 46 in favour of Flávio, and Renan Santos's voters split evenly. The defeated candidates thus brought Lula a net gain of about 0.6 million votes, while people who had not voted in the first round or had cast a blank or invalid ballot brought him around 4.3 million (The Atlas). This is an estimate, not a count of individual voters.
Lula added 10.4 million votes between the rounds, Flávio Bolsonaro 3.7 million
Votes in the 1st round (solid) and the gain in the 2nd round (light), in millions
Where the new votes could have come from: the ten eliminated candidates received 9.3 million votes between them in the 1st round, there were 1.8 million fewer blank and invalid ballots in the 2nd round, and 3.0 million more people turned out to vote. The results do not show exactly who switched to whom.
Political scientist Débora Thomé of the IDP institute attributes the turnaround mainly to an online mobilisation led by federal deputy André Janones, which spilled over onto the streets, and to high turnout among older voters (The Conversation). Janones's WhatsApp channel passed ten million users in two weeks. Election day was marred by public transport outages in São Paulo and Salvador, and the federal police are investigating transport disruptions in five states (Al Jazeera). Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin therefore extended voting by two hours. According to the AP news agency, both campaigns had asked for this (AP/PBS), yet Flávio Bolsonaro now cites the extension as his reason for not accepting the result. Zanin was formerly Lula's personal lawyer.
The polls were wrong for the second time in a row
With the exception of two smaller firms, every poll before the runoff showed Flávio Bolsonaro in the lead, with both Datafolha and Quaest putting him ahead by 51 to 49 per cent of valid votes. Only Vox Brasil and Colectta predicted a Lula victory (Estado de Minas). In the first round, the polls had erred in the opposite direction and underestimated Flávio Bolsonaro.
The major polling firms have not yet published their own explanations. Andrei Roman, head of AtlasIntel, whose firm also got it wrong, argues that its competitors used flawed models of who would actually turn out to vote. Fearing they would underestimate Flávio again, he says, they overstated his support (Diário do Centro do Mundo). That would be consistent with the record rise in turnout: people whom the polls had not counted as likely voters did, in the end, turn up.
Who the two candidates are
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT), turns 81 on 27 October. Born into a poor family in Pernambuco in the north-east, he trained as a lathe operator and in the 1970s led the metalworkers' union in São Paulo, where he defied the military dictatorship with strikes. In 1980 he co-founded the Workers' Party (PT). He was president from 2003 to 2010 and again from 2023, and is now about to begin his fourth term. In the Lava Jato (Car Wash) investigation he was convicted of corruption and spent 580 days in prison. In 2021 the Supreme Court annulled his convictions and found that Sergio Moro, the judge who had convicted him, had been biased. The hallmark of his governments is social programmes for the poorest, above all Bolsa Família.
Flávio Bolsonaro (PL), 45. The eldest son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, he spent sixteen years as a member of the Rio de Janeiro state legislature and has been a senator for the Liberal Party since 2019 (Senate). An investigation into allegations that his office made staff hand back part of their salaries was shelved by a court in 2022 after the Superior Court of Justice invalidated key evidence (Poder360). His father handed him the candidacy in December 2025. The main promise of his campaign was an amnesty for his father and others convicted over the coup attempt, and, should Congress not approve it, a presidential pardon (Euronews).
Even after the defeat, the Bolsonaros remain at the top of politics. Jair Bolsonaro is serving a sentence of 27 years and three months for attempting a coup after losing the 2022 election, under house arrest on health grounds. His son Eduardo, a former federal deputy who lobbied from the United States for American sanctions against Brazilian judges, was sentenced in June to four years and two months for coercion of the court. The verdict became final on 3 October, and Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered his arrest (Migalhas). His wife Michelle and his son Carlos were elected to the Senate on 4 October, for the Distrito Federal and for the state of Santa Catarina respectively (Times Brasil, Congresso em Foco).
How different areas voted
The map of Brazil looks much as it has in every election since 2006. Lula won all nine states of the North-east, while Flávio Bolsonaro won the whole of the South and the Centre-West, home to much of the country's agribusiness. The contest was decided in between, in the South-east and the North.
Lula holds the North-east and gained almost everywhere
All 5,570 municipalities in Brazil. Switch between the result, the shift between rounds and the change in turnout; hover over a municipality or search for it.
Flávio 70% or more (0)
Flávio 60–70% (0)
Flávio 55–60% (0)
Flávio 50–55% (0)
Lula 50–55% (0)
Lula 55–60% (0)
Lula 60–70% (0)
Lula 70% or more (0)
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Shares are of valid votes for the two candidates. Lula’s shift compares his share of the votes cast for the Lula–Flávio pair in the 1st round with the 2nd-round result. Voters abroad are not included in the map. Zoom with Ctrl + scroll wheel, two fingers or the buttons.Base map © OpenStreetMap contributors
Between the two rounds Lula improved his result in 5,411 of 5,571 municipalities, in all 27 states. He gained more in cities than in the countryside: by 3 to 3.5 percentage points in municipalities with more than 50,000 voters, and by 1.9 points in those with up to ten thousand voters. In the city of Rio de Janeiro, where Flávio Bolsonaro had led in the first round, Lula won with 51.5 per cent. He also won in São Paulo, Porto Alegre and Belém, and lost in Brasília, Belo Horizonte, Manaus, Curitiba and Goiânia.
The only state that swung to the other side between the rounds is Minas Gerais. Lula turned a first-round deficit of 589,000 votes into a lead of 109,000, and turnout there rose by 2.5 percentage points. Since 1989, nobody has become president without winning Minas Gerais (Metrópoles).
Lula gained most, however, in the South-east, home to 66 million voters. There he cut his deficit from 5.7 million votes to 2.8 million, while increasing his lead in the North-east from 11.1 to 13.7 million. The North ended almost level: Lula won it by 1,079 votes, even though it was the only region where turnout fell, by 1.8 points.
Lula widened his lead in the North-east and halved his deficit in the South-east
Vote margin between Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro by region, 1st round (circle) → 2nd round (arrow), in millions
Compared with the 2022 election, when Lula beat Jair Bolsonaro by 50.9 to 49.1 per cent, his electorate has shifted towards the cities. According to Schteingart, compared with 2022 Lula gained three points in cities with more than a million voters and lost the same amount in municipalities with up to ten thousand voters and in municipalities where agriculture carries great weight (The Atlas).
What the result means for Brazilians
Lula will govern with the most right-wing Congress since the 1980s, Reuters reports. The Bolsonaros' Liberal Party will have 121 of the 513 deputies, more than any other party, and the parties to the right of centre 303 seats combined (InfoMoney). According to the BBC, such a Congress could block Lula's nominees to the Supreme Court. Teixeira of FGV points out, however, that the centrão traditionally sides with whoever is in power.
According to a Datafolha poll from 13 and 14 October, Brazilians see violence (20 per cent), healthcare (18 per cent) and the economy (15 per cent) as the country's biggest problems. Lula's voters most often named violence and healthcare, Flávio Bolsonaro's voters the economy (CNN Brasil).
The election was also a vote on whether a family whose head has been convicted of attempting a coup would return to lead the country. Teixeira called the result "a significant defeat for Bolsonarism". Thomé wrote that Brazil had decided "to preserve and strengthen its young democracy". Analysts consulted by Reuters consider it highly unlikely that the result will be overturned, because Flávio Bolsonaro's campaign also asked for voting to be extended and his defeat is twice as large as his father's four years ago (Reuters).
What the result means for Central Europe
From a Central European perspective, Lula is an awkward partner. In May 2022 he told Time magazine that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was "as responsible as Putin" for the war (Reuters/Bloomberg). In May 2025 he stood at the Victory Day military parade in Moscow and, in the Kremlin, offered Putin cooperation in nuclear energy, defence and space (The Moscow Times). Brazil has not joined Western sanctions against Russia.
In April this year, however, Lula said that Brazil had "never recognised Russia's right to invade Ukrainian territory" (Ukrinform), and in June, at the G7 summit, Zelensky accepted his offer to mediate peace talks (Kyiv Independent). Nor was the alternative pro-Western in the sense that Central Europe understands it: Jair Bolsonaro visited Putin a week before the Russian invasion in February 2022 and declared Brazil neutral.
What matters more for Europe is that Lula's victory means stability on the other side of the EU–Mercosur trade agreement, which has been provisionally applied since 1 May and removes tariffs on most trade between the Union and Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay (Euronews). European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen congratulated Lula, saying that democracy had won (Al Jazeera). And for democracies in general, what matters is that in Latin America's largest country, the candidate whose main promise was a pardon for his father, convicted of attempting a coup, lost.
Lula will be sworn in on 5 January 2027, not on 1 January as his predecessors have been since 1995. The date was moved by a constitutional amendment from 2021 (Rádio Senado). He will be in office until 2031, when he will be 85.
