Brazil’s voters have moved camps

Brazil is holding a presidential runoff on Oct. 25, with the right-wing son of imprisoned former president Jair Bolsonaro leading the race

Brazilians awoke on Monday to a changed political map. Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, who is under house arrest for attempting to overturn the last presidential election, has received 47 percent of the vote in the first round of this year’s presidential election, while the incumbent, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, received 45 percent. Brazil appears poised to join the growing ranks of rightward-veering countries.

In fact, Bolsonaro’s first-place finish understates the scale of Brazil’s political shift. The far-right Liberal Party (PL) also won five governorships outright and its allies took Sao Paulo, Goias and three other states. It would hold 28 of 81 seats in the Senate, the largest faction in a legislative session since 1988. Lula’s former minister of finance Fernando Haddad lost Sao Paulo in the first round, and in Rio de Janeiro, a PL candidate who trailed the former mayor by 18 points last month, nearly beat him outright.

With a presidential runoff set for Oct. 25, Bolsonaro is the clear favorite. Lula could still close the gap, but he has no room for error. Every first-round leader since 1989 whose election went to a runoff has gone on to win the second round.

Illustration: Mountain People

Demography explains part of this shift. Brazil’s median age is 36, up from 29 in 2010. Brazilians are wealthier than they were when Lula’s left-wing Workers’ Party (PT) first won power in 2002, and evangelical Christians make up more than one-quarter of the population. With crime topping voters’ concerns, many put public order ahead of redistribution, the PT’s strong suit.

The PT has never found the right language to reach such voters. It is fielding an 80-year-old candidate for a fourth term because it never created a succession plan. Talented figures have long been sidelined or driven away, and women remain scarce at the top. The PT campaigned with radio jingles and rallies, while the right dominated online, ultimately making inroads in many PT strongholds.

The right also nationalized local politics. Gubernatorial and senate races became plebiscites on Lula, allowing the Bolsonaro brand to carry candidates who had been unknown just months earlier. Many voters cast ballots for the right as a protest against Lula. Since that kind of behavior is generally reserved for the runoff, it suggests that their minds are made up.

The Supreme Court became another liability for Lula. Justice Alexandre de Moraes led the coup case against Bolsonaro and ordered his arrest. Though Moraes was appointed by former president Michel Temer in 2017, many voters came to see him as a figure of the left. The collapse of Banco Master reinforced that view. The bank had a contract worth about 129 million reals (US$26 million) with the law firm of Moraes’ wife, although they deny wrongdoing. While Flavio was also implicated in the same case, through messages about the banker Daniel Vorcaro funding a film on his father, the right nonetheless casts the judiciary as part of Lula’s camp.

The PT does have a narrow path to victory, but the arithmetic is unforgiving. Minor presidential candidates took about 8 percent of the vote, and most of their supporters lean right. Bolsonaro needs only one-third of them, whereas Lula must either win two-thirds of them or draw several million new voters from the more than 33 million who stayed home. He becomes a slight favorite only if about 7 million additional voters turn out and break heavily in his favor, which would require a mobilization in the northeast far beyond anything seen in 2022.

Lula’s campaign must make the runoff about the Bolsonaro family. It can call attention to the fact that Flavio’s brother Eduardo lobbied Washington for the tariffs and sanctions that hit Brazilian exporters hard last year. Moreover, the Bolsonaros are well-known allies of US President Donald Trump, and Brazil’s intelligence agency reportedly told European officials that the US is interfering in this election. Such charges make sovereignty a live issue for Lula to seize on.

However, to address concerns about his age and give centrist voters permission to support the left, Lula should commit publicly to serving only one more term and naming a successor. He also must take a stronger line on public security and safety — an issue that the PT has always ceded to the right.

To that end, the federal government’s meaningful action against the financial networks of Brazil’s largest organized-crime operation the Primeiro Comando da Capital, allows Lula to campaign on his law-enforcement record, in addition to the PT’s redistributive economic policies. The PT also needs to court evangelical women and gig workers directly, such as by addressing living costs and promoting more portable benefits.

Whatever happens on Oct. 25, the harder work comes after. The PT must position itself for the Brazil that actually exists: an older, wealthier, more devout country preoccupied with crime. That would require a new generation of leaders.

Brazil is part of a broader, hemispheric pattern. In October last year, midterm elections left Argentinian President Javier Milei in a stronger position. Soon after, Hondurans voted out the governing Libre party and elected a conservative president. In Chile, the conservative President Jose Antonio Kast won in December last year. In Peru, President Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of a far-right former president convicted of serious human-rights abuses, won a runoff. And in Colombia, the right-wing candidate, President Abelardo de la Espriella, narrowly beat Ivan Cepeda, ending the left’s hold on power. Security and the cost of living decided most of these contests, and the left had little to offer on either issue.

Poland offers another warning. In 2023, a broad coalition led by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk ousted the illiberal Law and Justice (PiS) party, largely by mobilizing women and young voters who had previously stayed home. However, the new government’s efforts to restore judicial independence and reverse the previous PiS takeover of public media drew charges of partisanship, and last year, Poles elected a right-wing candidate in President Karol Nawrocki, who is blocking much of the government’s agenda. Ousting an illiberal government turned out to be the easy part. Holding on to power usually requires progress on kitchen-table or quality-of-life issues. As important as institutional repairs might be, they rarely mobilize voters.

Still, South Korea offers a different lesson. When right-wing former president Yoon Suk-yeol declared martial law in December 2024, the people took to the streets, and legislators climbed fences to reach the parliamentary chamber and overturn the edict. The decree lasted only a few hours, and Yoon was ultimately removed and prosecuted.

Similarly, in Brazil, the Supreme Federal Court and the electoral court held the line after former president Jair Bolsonaro’s attempted coup in January 2023. However, the judiciary’s expansive role in the crisis created a populist backlash that produced the new right-leaning Senate. Sometimes, institutions can preserve their legitimacy only by avoiding perceptions of overreach.

The lesson, in Brazil and elsewhere, is that democrats cannot count on the courts to save them. They must win on the issues that voters care about, starting with crime, while protecting the independent institutions that they would need while in opposition. Brazilians would choose their next president in a little over two months. For the PT to find its way back onto solid ground would take considerably longer — even if it ekes out a comeback victory this time.

Robert Muggah, cofounder of the Igarape Institute and the SecDev Group, is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Cities of Tomorrow and an adviser to the Global Risks Report.