Brazil's President Lula wins runoff election to clinch historic fourth term

Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva won the presidential runoff vote on Sunday, the country's electoral court said, defeating right-wing Senator Flavio Bolsonaro to secure an unprecedented fourth non-consecutive term.

Bolsonaro, the eldest son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, had finished first in the election's first round and hoped to revive his father's far-right movement. He says he will not concede defeat and will seek to have the result annulled. 

At times, Lula's re-election looked like a long shot, as voters soured on him and his Workers' Party after years of corruption scandals and rising prices, while sweeping societal changes left the former metalworker and union leader looking out of touch with an increasingly app-based economy and its growing ranks of informal workers. 

Lula's victory marks another comeback in a career full of them. The 80-year-old was jailed from 2018 to 2019 on corruption charges that were later overturned, paving the way for him to beat Jair Bolsonaro in the 2022 election.

“He is a statesman, a giant,” leftist federal lawmaker Erika Hilton, who was with Lula in Sao Paulo during the vote count, told Reuters.

The path to victory

Pollsters said better-than-expected turnout had powered Lula to victory. Leonardo Barreto, the co-founder of consultancy Think Policy, said voters had chosen Lula's familiar embrace over Bolsonaro's novelty.

“People today are choosing between change, with some apprehension, and a known path, which guarantees certain rights,” he said.

During the campaign, Lula pointed to a track record of falling poverty and inequality, while unemployment, illiteracy and deforestation hit record lows during his third term.

He warned Bolsonaro would cut welfare spending, backslide on social advances and hand over Brazil's sovereignty to U.S. President Donald Trump, whose State Department led a campaign to get the Bolsonaros back to power.

Lula's win deprives Trump of a major addition to what has been a growing bloc of friendly right-wing Latin American governments that have embraced Washington's agenda on security and migration.

Celso Amorim, a former Lula foreign minister, told Reuters the leftist “would be very important for establishing a point of balance in Latin America. Lula is that balance.”

An advocate for the working class

Lula, who was president between 2003 and 2011, campaigned on a potent mix of pragmatism and populism that has shaped his career in national politics for half a century, rolling out a slew of reforms aimed at improving the lives of workers and poor Brazilians.

These gained steam with late-campaign pledges that ranged from free nationwide weekend public ​transport, which has to be formally submitted to Congress, to a ‌15 per cent increase in his trademark welfare program that is already being implemented.

Lula also championed a constitutional amendment that became Brazil's biggest labor reform in decades, which passed with wide support in Congress.

Read more: 

• Brazilians head to polls in high-stakes, polarised election
• Flavio Bolsonaro faces financial crimes probe weeks before Brazil election
• Brazil considers broader retaliation as tariff row with U.S. deepens

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Brazil elections Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva Flavio Bolsonaro runoff election