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community weblog

Ainda Estou Aqui

Brazil Re-Elects Lula. They were expecting him to be defeated but: "Mr. Lula fended off a challenge from Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of the former president who had attempted a coup four years ago, after Brazil's judiciary ordered that polls remain open two extra hours because of transportation delays and bad weather. Mr. Lula received 51.8 percent of the vote, versus 48.2 percent for Flávio Bolsonaro, with 99.9 percent of the ballots counted, according to official preliminary results. The leftist's 3.6 percent margin of victory was wider than four years ago. Even more stunning was that he achieved the comeback after placing second in the first round of voting earlier this month, a first in Brazilian history."
posted by storybored on Oct 25, 2026 at 6:52 PM

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Holy cow. I'm pleasantly surprised, which is a feeling I haven't often had over the last 11+ years.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 6:54 PM

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Given the furious history behind anything Bolsanaro in Brazil, that result is still much to close for comfort.
posted by CynicalKnight at 6:56 PM

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So glad about this. One domino down in the right direction.
posted by supermedusa at 7:01 PM

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This is such a profound message to people around the world. Oligarchs and authoritarians can be defeated, democracy can be defended.
posted by storybored at 7:02 PM

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A little bit of hope I can enjoy here in the US.
posted by 2N2222 at 7:14 PM

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Thank fucking god.

Now my fear is that people in the Trump administration are planning something along the lines of what they did to Maduro this time under the flimsy pretense of a "stolen election."
posted by Saxon Kane at 7:21 PM

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Thank god, this would have been disastrous in Brazil - Flavio was going to cut social programmes, was talking about letting husbands vote on behalf of their wives, was going to pack the supreme court, all kinds of nastiness for women, for black people, for indigenous people there - but for the world, the climate effects of cutting down what's left of the Amazon would have accelerated the disasters ahead of us. We can all be happy not just from the morale boost, there's a material benefit for us all.

Now the challenges are dealing with a Congress that's not supportive, a supreme court that's politically divided, and figuring out how to renew leadership on the left before Lula dies or falls ill or his term ends.

(These insights courtesy of my beloved and friends).
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 8:07 PM

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Oh my god oh my god oh my god THANK GOD, I was so worried.

I saw this article yesterday about pop music fandoms in Brazil: 'Taylor Swift tells us to take the lead!' Could highly organised pop fans clinch victory for Brazil's Lula?

and realized this morning that the election was TODAY and hoped beyond hope that Lula would win but couldn't make myself look.

Thank you SO MUCH, storybored, for sharing this here. I am having a hard time today and really needed this amazingly good news.
posted by kristi at 8:14 PM

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Oh yeah the rumour mill in Brazil says there are American planes waiting to take Bolsonaro and other key figures out of the country because it's pretty likely he'll end up in prison on one charge or another soon.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 8:33 PM

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they're american planes
made in america
smoking or non-smoking
posted by flabdablet at 9:42 PM

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i_am_joe's_spleen, your earlier links really illuminated the global stakes, thanks!

also worth celebrating today...

team democratic voice > teams exit/loyalty :P
posted by kliuless at 10:10 PM

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I'd be tickled if Lula thanked Trump for endorsing Bolsonaro.

My guess is it did indeed help.
posted by jamjam at 10:38 PM

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This is a huge relief. Also, fuck fascists everywhere, go cry about it.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 11:24 PM

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Last week's TrueAnon with Vincent Bevins was recorded after the election but before the runoff but is a great discussion of the state of the PL (more far-right influencer-y), Lula's PT (propped up by his charisma?), and where things could go from here
posted by supercres at 12:16 AM

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What a good morning. The sun is shining and there is a sliver of hope out there.
When I woke up I looked at The Guardian first thing to see about the Brazilian election, and was pleasantly surprised to see the news from Serbia too.
There are still many, many steps to go, but we all need a bit of hope now and again to keep walking.
posted by mumimor at 1:13 AM

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They announced it on the news this morning, but with a sentence that kept the result until the very end. I was expecting bad news, so I cheered a bit when it became clear it was a victory for Lula. Let's hope it's a good sign for the moral arc to continue bending towards justice.
posted by Karmeliet at 2:10 AM

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Guardian: "Don't write the word 'corrupto' on your hand and show it to the audience," Bosworth suggested.
posted by Wordshore at 2:29 AM

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RTE reports: "The scale of Flavio Bolsonaro's loss to Mr Lula - by more than twice his father's losing margin - and the fact his campaign also asked for an extension due to rains in the conservative-leaning south make any annulment unlikely, analysts said."
Sauce for goose, sauce for gander
posted by BobTheScientist at 2:41 AM

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48.2 percent for Flávio Bolsonaro

So sixty million Brazilians are every bit as irredeemably gullible as ninety million Americans.

What a time to be alive.
posted by flabdablet at 3:57 AM

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This is such a profound message to people around the world. Oligarchs and authoritarians can be defeated, democracy can be defended.

Not to rain on the parade but there are multiple messages here: democracy can be defended/restored but also taken away at any time, and the fight has to be re-fought from scratch every few years (at best) because turns out there is nothing that any authoritarian government can do that is so bad that people will remember the badness for very long, and saving democracy/the environment/the world is a matter of very thin and unreliable margins. And if you're an authoritarian government or wannabe the message is surely to get plugging those holes and attacking even harder to leave even less room for those annoying democratic revivals, short-lived though they may be.

This election isn't a cause for celebration (aside from temporary relief), it's a warning to pro-democracy people and pro-democracy governments everywhere.
posted by trig at 4:02 AM

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That said, it is a huge relief. I really hope Lula and the left make the most of it.
posted by trig at 4:09 AM

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**Happy Dance**
Hopefully this will see the end of the vile Bolsonazi family but I somehow doubt it.
The political grass root organization of the left in the last two weeks has been remarkable throughout the country. My other half's 90 year old aunt was taken to vote by one of her nephews.
The bolsonazis attempted voter suppression by paralysing urban transport. Over 500 buses in Salvsdor did not move until after miday and a court order. The arrest warrent for the Bahia transport secretary could not be served as he was conveniently in Paris.
Voting was extended by judicial mandate until 1900 but many polling stations closed as normal at 1700 saying they had not received a formal notification..
Lula was contesting not only Flavio Bolsonaro and his milicia associates but also police and local government trying to prevent voters getting to the polls but also interferance from Meta and big Tech as well as US political and capital interests with huge sums entering the Bolsonaro coffers from dubious sources..
All in all a remarkable victory with a clear result officially announced within 4 hours of polls closing.
Something many other countries could learn from.
The following months will probably be politically "interesting" and with luck some of the anti democratic operators will find themselves in jail.
posted by adamvasco at 4:11 AM

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I'm very glad that Lula won, obviously, but the legislature is still very much in the hands of the Right, so Lula may struggle to govern. On the other hand, my impression is that the Right is more fragmented than in some other places, so compromises and deals may let actual work get done.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:19 AM

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adamvasco thanks, those are some really interesting details and barely reported in the English-language press. (I'm pretty shocked that voting stations normally close so early. Wikipedia even says that all the stations across the country open and close simultaneously so the hours can be even worse depending on the time zone you're in, like 6am-3pm. I guess it helps that elections are on Sundays, but even so, there are people who work on Sundays!)
posted by trig at 4:31 AM

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This election isn't a cause for celebration (aside from temporary relief), it's a warning to pro-democracy people and pro-democracy governments everywhere.

I mean, no, it's a huge win for independent judiciaries, and proof that everyone needs them, because there were a lot of court orders happening to make sure that the buses ran and the polling stations stayed open.

If you have partisan judiciaries, that's a huge problem, and something constitutional that absolutely needs to be fixed. Brazil broadly seems to be free from that problem.
posted by ambrosen at 4:35 AM

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Very glad to see this result!

There was a quote from Ian Dunt from a year ago:
There's a set of unspoken rules underneath the surface veneer of media coverage.

One of those rules is that an election victory by the populist right proves that they have an intuitive understanding of the instincts of the electorate which liberals must humbly try to adapt themselves to. An election victory by progressives, on the other hand, is a freak aberration which will inevitably be reversed, probably due to the hubris and naivety of those who just proved triumphant. Victories on the left are contingent and transitory while victories on the right are abiding and profound.

Since then, Bolsonaro was defeated in Brazil, Vucic was defeated in Serbia, Orban was defeated in Hungary, Wilders was defeated in the Netherlands.

Yes we shouldn't get complacent. But we shouldn't fall into the trap of thinking our victories are just freaks and aberrations. Those losers can lose and often do.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 5:38 AM

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Also bears repeating to all and sundry just how consistently bad the Right has always proved to be at actually running anything once it does weasel its way into power.

For my whole life on this planet I've been detecting a very strong correlation between how right-wing an incoming government's platform is and how mind-boggling the level of fundamental economic damage it goes on to inflict on the overwhelming majority of its voters once in office. Pretty sure that's just another manifestation of reality's universally-acknowledged left-wing bias.
posted by flabdablet at 5:54 AM

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A bit of a round up: Oliver Stuenkel writing in El Pais is one of the more astute foreign Journalists writing about Brazil: Lula's historic comeback is a defeat for Trump.
Flavio Bolsonaro has appealed to annul the election calling the extension of voting hours illegal but forgetting that his party also applied for this.
The Amazon has a reprieve.
How Lula turned his election fortunes around in three weeks. The 9 finger insult delivered to Lula was incredibly rude and very Bolsonazi / Trumpian. Lulas's response
"I'm not going to have some militia member calling me '9-fingers.' He doesn't even know what a formal employment record is; his first job was a sham—in his father's office," said Lula.
posted by adamvasco at 6:57 AM

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https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-oligarchs-lose-a-big-one

Having been gaslighted by the right, some of the global media appeared to have difficulty wrapping their minds around the outcome. Here was the headline in the Financial Times as I write this:

Lula is re-elected Brazil's president in knife-edge vote

"Knife-edge vote"? Lula won by 3 percentage points, twice Donald Trump's margin in 2024.

And he did so despite efforts by the right, in Brazil and elsewhere, to rig the election against him.

Voting was extended by two hours because widespread disruptions to public transportation had made it difficult for working-class voters to get to the polls. Lula's campaign alleged that these disruptions were engineered by pro-Bolsonaro mayors, a claim that was clearly supported by the evidence in some cities, and was generally plausible given recent political history — specifically, Bolsonaro senior's attempt to overturn the last presidential election.

And Brazil's own right wasn't alone in seemingly trying to rig the election for Bolsonaro. U.S.-based social media companies, Meta in particular, appeared to put their thumbs on the scale.

***

For context, Brazilian law states that public transportation must be free on election day, and all bus companies must make their entire fleets available to voters.

Also, "The voting extension forced the TSE to suspend the vote count mid-tabulation, with early figures already showing Lula ahead, injecting deep uncertainty into one of the most closely contested elections in Brazilian history."

The judge says the extension didn't change the outcome. It was a nationwide extension, not just an extension in Lula supporting areas or an extension in Bolsonaro supporting areas.
posted by subdee at 7:28 AM

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Lula wins reelection in Brazil, halting Latin America's rightward shift


His unexpectedly weak first-round performance forced his campaign to overhaul its digital strategy and messaging from claiming past achievements to making new promises, including debt relief for families and an increase in Brazil's main cash-transfer program.

His campaign sought to mobilize women voters by highlighting Flávio Bolsonaro's record on women's rights. As a state representative in Rio, Bolsonaro voted against extending maternity leave and against disarming police officers accused of domestic violence.

His past remarks, including a 2006 speech in which he called Brazilian women "a tourist attraction of our country," drew accusations of misogyny.

Bolsonaro initially sought to cast himself as a more moderate version of his father, but it didn't last. As Lula opened a lead in early polls, Bolsonaro moved further right, embracing a hard-line agenda on crime that included chemical castration for rapists, reducing the age of criminal responsibility for serious crimes to 14 and building prisons modeled on those of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele.

***

It's that joke about being offered a chicken sandwich or a shit sandwich covered in pieces of broken glass on an airplane, and pausing to ask how is the chicken cooked? But also telling that Bolsonaro had to move that far to the right to get the support of Meta / oligarchs / the rightwing masses in Brazil.
posted by subdee at 7:43 AM

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Lula's Upset Is a Win for the Rule of Law and a Blow to Trump: The leftist leader's surprising victory over the favored far-right candidate should be celebrated—and perhaps emulated—by supporters of democracy worldwide. [New Republic]
And Lula's win was in many ways a unique victory for democracy itself. The blue wave likely to hit America next month and deliver huge losses to Republicans is excellent news, but Trump's unpopularity can be attributed to high gas prices and the anti-incumbment sentiment hurting leaders across the world. It's not clear that the U.S. elections are a rejection of Trump, the far right, or authoritarianism. Brazil is different. Lula is the incumbent. And after he finished behind Bolsonaro in the first round of the election, he and his supporters fully leaned into the argument that Brazil was choosing between democracy and authoritarianism. Brazilians chose democracy, putting aside their concerns about electing an 80-year-old to a fourth term.
posted by mazola at 9:07 AM

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So sixty million Brazilians are every bit as irredeemably gullible as ninety million Americans.

Some further detail I saw this floating around Mastodon (but am not sure of their original source):

@MiaMarkTwo@syzito.xyz [Mastodon]:
Wow. It was WOMEN who gave Lula his victory.

Men seem to prefer fascism by quite a lot �
posted by mazola at 9:11 AM

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Born 27 October 1945
posted by BWA at 9:16 AM

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This is fantastic news! My limited reading of what Lula has accomplished this term is "a lot!" Especially in the face of the hard right congress and, well, the rich. One of Brazil's towering figures at the least. God I hope there is an untainted successor, cause the fascists will never leave the stage.

And oh yea, out of the 5 stories I read in the oligarch's mass media this am, all were highly focused on Brazil's markets tanking cause of Lula's win (obv the most important thing). For hopeful outsiders like myself, the Guardian is the only English language mass media that seems remotely fair.

And oh yea x 2 - fuck Zuckerberg and the damn Techlords. Get the hell out of our lives you mutants.
posted by WatTylerJr at 11:41 AM

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Men seem to prefer fascism

We're only in it for the gender affirming care.
posted by flabdablet at 12:08 PM

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I was in Brazil for the weekend, for a friend's wedding, and at the airport (GRU) when the official results came out. There was a huge celebration that propagated through the terminal gates like a wave, many people opening into smiles, hugging each other, and waving flags — and a few people complaining. Overall, the sentiment was positive, much more than I imagined.
posted by robida at 12:51 PM

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A supreme court judge has just ordered Flavio Bolsonaro to surrender his passport. Via Globo
posted by adamvasco at 2:11 PM

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Erika Hilton, a black trans woman, is being lauded as instrumental to Lula's win. I found this cool article about her.

Who is Erika Hilton? Black trans politician was one of Lula's loudest campaigners (Prasanna Bachchhav for The Print)
posted by adrienneleigh at 3:50 PM

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[Fixed misspelling of 'Bolsonaro' in this comment.]
posted by mod_adrienneleigh at 6:00 PM

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Flávio Bolsonaro Ordered to Hand Over Passport in Money Laundering Inquiry

Brazil's Supreme Court on Monday ordered the police to seize the passport of Flávio Bolsonaro, the presidential candidate defeated in Sunday's election, because he is under criminal investigation related to a money laundering scheme.

The ruling, issued by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, stems from an inquiry into Mr. Bolsonaro's links to a Brazilian lawyer who is accused of laundering more than $1 billion through a vast fraud scheme, according to a court document reviewed by The New York Times.

(Also, Facebook changed its name to Meta because of its assistance with overthrowing democratically-elected governments in favor of authoritarian regimes. When we use the term Meta, instead of Facebook, we perpetuate amnesia as amnesty for its owners for their crimes.)
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:51 PM

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So it's one thing to seize a passport and quite another to see what comes of that

But days after an election? Look at Brazil, showing the way
posted by runsrealgood at 11:44 PM

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hell yeah
posted by okayturnip at 12:10 AM

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