Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was declared the winner of Brazil's presidential runoff on Sunday night, securing a fourth term with 51.79% of valid votes and becoming the first Brazilian president since the country's return to democracy in 1988 to win an election after losing the first round.
A first-round loss, then a surge
The Superior Electoral Court declared the result at 9:08 p.m. in Brasília. With 100% of ballots counted, Lula, of the Workers' Party, received 64,256,232 votes to 59,826,041 for Flávio Bolsonaro, a senator and the son of convicted former president Jair Bolsonaro, who took 48.21%. The margin was roughly 4.4 million votes.
The result reversed the first round on October 4, when Bolsonaro finished ahead with 47.03% to Lula's 45.16% - the closest first-round gap since redemocratization. Between the two rounds, Lula added more than 10.3 million votes to his total; Bolsonaro added 3.7 million.
Turnout was the difference. Some 33 million eligible voters abstained in the first round, and Lula's campaign spent the three weeks between rounds focused on getting them to the polls. Sunday's abstention rate fell to 19.21%, about 30 million voters - the largest drop in abstention between rounds of a presidential election since 1989.
An unusual extension
Voting itself was not without drama. In an unprecedented move, the Supreme Court ordered polling stations to stay open two extra hours after both campaigns filed requests - Lula's team arguing that voters in São Paulo and Bahia were stranded by a shortage of buses, Bolsonaro's citing heavy rain in the south and in São Paulo. The order came just as polls were due to close, and some stations that had already shut could not reopen.
Justice Kassio Nunes Marques, the court's president, confirmed Lula's victory and said the extension caused no problems for the count or the electoral process.
What comes next
Bolsonaro, who had been preparing a victory speech, refused to recognize the outcome, calling it "inexplicable" and "impossible" and saying he would seek its annulment. Election law experts told the BBC that path is remote: Fernando Neisser of the Institute of Lawyers of São Paulo said a challenge would be difficult from a legal standpoint given the size of the margin.
Lula, a former metalworker and union leader who first took office in 2003, will begin his new term on January 5, 2027, alongside Vice-President Geraldo Alckmin. Speaking to supporters in São Paulo on Sunday night, he called the result a "loss for negativity, lies," added "long live democracy," and promised: "This, my fourth term, will be the best of any president in the history of this country. It will be the one in which I listen most to the Brazilian people."
Alckmin, who served as a centrist counterweight on the ticket, told him: "You, for the second time, have saved Brazilian democracy."
The outcome also reverberates beyond Brazil. Lula has been one of the region's most vocal critics of President Donald Trump, and his victory lands amid an already strained relationship between Washington and Brasília over trade and political interference. How the Bolsonaro movement - which remains in control of a large and loyal voting base, and whose patriarch was convicted of plotting a coup and is serving a 27-year sentence - responds to a second consecutive presidential defeat will shape Brazil's politics well before the new term begins.
Whether Flávio Bolsonaro follows through on his annulment threat is the immediate question. The electoral court's declaration stands, the count is complete, and the transition clock has started.
October 26, 2026