The Economist: Lula, the great survivor, makes history

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has won a fourth term as Brazil’s president. He trailed Flávio Bolsonaro by 2m votes after the first round, then took the run-off 52% to 48%. No candidate since Brazil’s return to democracy in 1985 had lost the first round and gone on to win. Three things helped: a WhatsApp-driven campaign, generous pre-election handouts, and growing doubts about Bolsonaro’s alleged militia ties. For South Africa, the result keeps a familiar left-leaning partner in charge of a fellow BRICS member. But Lula takes over a strained economy and faces a right-wing Congress, while Bolsonaro, with possible backing from Donald Trump, is trying to get the result annulled..From The Economist, published under licence. The original article can be found on www.economist.com© 2025 The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved..The Economist.It is perhaps the most dramatic comeback in Brazil’s political history. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who most pundits thought was dead and buried after the first round of voting, won Brazil’s presidential election on October 25th. Lula, as the 80-year-old left-winger is known, received 52% of votes compared with 48% for his opponent, Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of Jair, a hard-right former president who is under house arrest for attempting a coup (see chart). Lula joins an exclusive club of presidents who have won four terms democratically, alongside Franklin Roosevelt..Lula trailed Mr Bolsonaro by 2m votes after the first-round election on October 4th. Candidates who were knocked out, and who between them received 8% of votes, backed his opponent. No presidential hopeful since the return of democracy in 1985 had lost the first round and won the run-off. All polls put Mr Bolsonaro ahead. Compounding matters, voters appeared sick of Lula’s Workers’ Party, which has been in power for 18 of the past 24 years. Yet in less than three weeks Lula gained an extra 10m votes, many of them from people who had failed to vote or spoiled their ballots in the first round.Three things explain his remarkable turnaround. The first is a tactical overhaul. Ahead of the first round, Lula ran a disorganised, analogue campaign focused on issues that felt distant to many voters, such as adding value to Brazil’s mineral exports. He wore a Panama hat to hide scars from a recent operation to remove cancerous cells from his head, which reminded voters of his age. While Mr Bolsonaro’s campaign spent at least $2m boosting his content online before the first round, Lula’s spent barely $500,000, instead handing out stickers with his face on them.Between the two rounds, Lula discovered both his mojo and the internet. He scrapped the hat. Once a technophobe who famously did not own a mobile phone, he began posting selfie videos on Instagram. If Lula has anyone to thank for his victory it is André Janones, a 42-year old evangelical congressman from Minas Gerais, Brazil’s bellwether state. After the president’s initial loss, he set up a WhatsApp channel called “Lula’s Army”, which attracted over 10m members in two weeks. On it Mr Janones gave members “missions”, such as reposting an image of Lula on social media, helping him to go viral in the final stretch of the campaign. In his victory speech, Lula promised to make digital communications central in his next term.Second, the government opened the spigots. Lula raised handouts in Brazil’s flagship welfare programme by 15%. He pushed Congress into passing a law to reduce the working week by a day, without pay cuts. He pledged to make public transport free on weekends and forgive federal debts for sole traders, as well as hand out $1,000 to 1m of them. Incumbents in Brazil often make lavish giveaways before elections, but even by Brazilian standards Lula has been generous.Women v FlávioFinally, most Brazilians decided that Mr Bolsonaro was beyond the pale. Two televised debates helped to rehash his dodgy past, especially his alleged links to Rio de Janeiro’s militias, groups of corrupt policemen who work as hitmen and extortionists. As a state deputy, he awarded a medal of honour to Adriano da Nóbrega, the leader of a notorious death squad who had been imprisoned for homicide. Mr Nóbrega’s wife and mother were later found to be on Mr Bolsonaro’s payroll (he says he was unaware of this). In 2023, Mr Bolsonaro, by then a senator, sent over $40,000 of taxpayer money to a member of a death squad who was later jailed for helping to assassinate a popular left-wing politician. In phone chats, the hitman called Mr Bolsonaro (who denies wrongdoing) “our senator”. Two weeks after the first-round vote, one of Mr Bolsonaro’s allies in Rio was arrested on charges of working with militiamen and drug-traffickers.These dubious ties appear to have turned off female voters in particular. One decisive episode came during the last presidential debate, on October 23rd. Mr Bolsonaro, who is a lawyer, was asked about a case in which he defended a policeman accused of killing a five-year-old girl. The child’s mother was in the audience—turning to her, he mixed up her name with that of her dead daughter. Silvânia, a maid in Rio who plumped for Mr Bolsonaro in the first round, appeared to speak for many women when she told The Economist that “it made me feel very upset.” She voted for Lula in the run-off.The final straw may have been a scandal that broke on the eve of the ballot. An investigation by Brazilian journalists showed that at the height of the pandemic, lobbyists who were trying to sell vaccines to Mr Bolsonaro senior, who was then in power, threw a party for Flávio on a yacht with three prostitutes.Yet it says much about the unappetising choice placed before voters that almost half the country was willing to look past the Bolsonaros’ baggage. Right-wingers—including Jair’s wife, brother and two other sons, who were elected to Congress—now make up the largest caucus in both houses. That will make it difficult for Lula to govern, especially since constitutional limits (and his age) mean that he cannot run again. He could become a lame duck from day one..Read more:.Brazil’s Bolsonaro on brink of a comeback - why Pretoria should pay attention.His priority will be to fix Brazil’s creaking economy. Thanks to his own spendthrift policies, the central bank has hiked real interest rates to vertigo-inducing heights. Government debt-to-GDP rose by over ten percentage points in Lula’s last four years in office. Rather than announce a party cadre as finance minister, he will have to appoint a heavyweight and offer a credible plan for reducing spending to calm markets. So far, his pre-election giveaways have signalled that he may do the opposite.Mr Bolsonaro, true to family form, said he would try to get the election result annulled, after bad weather and transport problems led the Supreme Court to extend voting hours. (Mr Bolsonaro had himself asked for an extension.) His quest may find a willing backer in Donald Trump, who is close to the Bolsonaro clan, as well as other presidents in a region that has taken a right-wing turn. Lula beat the odds to win the presidency. He will have to do so again if he wants to govern effectively..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.

The Economist: Lula, the great survivor, makes history

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