Brazil has elected Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva president for the fourth time, making him the most prominent political leader in the country’s history as a democracy. Coming after a first-round loss, his surprise victory is not merely a coronation of the 81-year-old former metalworker. The main protagonist in the 2026 election drama is the Brazilian people: An unprecedented popular movement on social media and in the streets prevented the return of the far-right Bolsonaro family to power.
For the first time in Brazilian history, the presidential candidate who came in second in the first ballot won the runoff election. On Oct. 25, Mr. Lula received 52 percent of the vote against 48 percent for 45-year-old Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, the oldest son of former president Jair Bolsonaro. The elder Bolsonaro, who governed between 2019 and 2023, is currently serving a 27-year sentence under house arrest for his role in an attempted coup following his election loss in 2022.
Mr. Lula received 10 million more votes than he had in the first round, mainly among undecided voters and those who had abstained from voting then, exit polls suggest. Abstentions fell from 21 percent to 19 percent in the run-off.
Political analysts believe Mr. Lula also managed to convert thousands of votes previously delivered to Mr. Bolsonaro—many in urban peripheries, such as in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro states, most likely among conservative women, evangelical Protestants and the elderly.
Lula gets social
The 2026 elections were marked by the powerful impact of social media, according to Felipe Rodrigues, a professor in political communication and electoral marketing at the Brazilian Institute of Education, Development and Research.
“Social media had been a territory where the right [dominated] engagement for several elections, but in this race, the left competed…with something it does better than the right, which is organizing activists,” he told America.
“In 2018, the distribution of content through WhatsApp was fundamental to electing Bolsonaro. In 2026, the centralized operation [of the Workers Party] elected Lula.”
Mr. Lula was given a cellphone, his first, and even posted a selfie video with it. A WhatsApp channel created by the federal representative André Janones brought together more than 10 million users in just a few days. But its content was not limited to highlighting Mr. Lula; the channel included many posts aimed at raising suspicion and fear of his opponent.
At one point, the campaign ran YouTube livestreamed videos all day long. And Vice President Geraldo Alckmin, a center-right politician, took on a more prominent role in the runoff than in the first round, while the president’s wife, Rosângela Lula da Silva, stepped back. She has often been criticized for being too outspoken for the role of first lady. Mr. Alckmin, instead, is a low-key 73-year-old physician, nicknamed picolé de chuchu, or “squash popsicle,” for his lack of charisma, but he has managed to act as a bridge-builder between Mr. Lula and Brazil’s business community.
Mr. Lula is not a churchgoer but has described himself as Catholic. “There are so many people more prepared than me, with more diplomas than me, who have studied more than me. And why? I was chosen by God, because I always think that God’s finger is on my head,” Mr. Lula said in his victory speech.
“I have no preference for any religion. I have a preference for respect for the faith of the Brazilian people. And that they practice their faith and their spirituality in whatever way they want,” he said. “It is up to the secular state to guarantee full religious freedom so that people can exercise their faith freely in the world.”
In this campaign, he made a concerted effort to win over the evangelical Protestant vote, a bloc he hoped to peel away from Mr. Bolsonaro.
Tabata Tesser, a religion sociologist from the University of São Paulo, told America that while Mr. Bolsonaro sought to publicly affirm an evangelical identity, Mr. Lula sought to engage with evangelicals by promoting the theme of “family prosperity” as a goal of his administration without turning the race into a direct religious confrontation.
“Among Catholic voters, majority support for Lula was associated with issues such as national sovereignty, defense of the Amazon and social policies,” she said. “This does not mean that the Catholic Church endorsed a candidate or party—it did not—but that there is a convergence between aspects of Lula’s program and principles of the social doctrine of the church.”
During the election campaign, the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil released messages of encouragement to voters, reaffirming democratic principles without pointing to a preferred candidate.
After the election result, the leadership of the bishops’ conference stated their priorities: “Brazil continues to face challenges that demand shared responsibility: overcoming poverty and hunger, reducing inequality, promoting decent work, access to health care, education and housing, the protection of families, public security, care for our Common Home and the unconditional defense of life and human dignity, from conception to its natural end.”
A group of 64 bishops, however, signed a separate declaration defending Catholic priests and religious who took visible anti-Bolsonaro positions during the election.
“In the final days of the campaign, a significant group of priests, bishops, men and women, religious and lay people began to declare their vote for Lula, many citing national sovereignty and the defense of the Amazon,” Ms. Tesser said, describing those endorsements as unprecedented.
Lula’s Catholic agenda?
She believes Mr. Lula’s victory brings more hope for those who defend the Catholic Church’s “Laudato Si’” agenda and its focus on care of creation, environmental justice and social equity. Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical, she said, “links the ecological question to social justice, proposing an integral ecology that does not separate environmental degradation from the living conditions of the poorest.”
That does not mean Mr. Lula’s victory is necessarily a political win for Brazil’s Catholic Church. Many conservative Catholics are Bolsonaro supporters.
“The result shows that the Catholic vote cannot be reduced to [personal] moral issues and [social] customs. Issues such as poverty, work, the environment, democracy and national sovereignty are also central to the Catholic political conscience,” Ms. Tesser said. “In this sense, the election reinforces the importance of a reading of the faith that considers its social dimension and not only its [personal] one.”
Just days ago, it seemed that the end of Mr. Lula’s political career was near. Election polls showed Mr. Lula and Mr. Bolsonaro tied going into the first round of voting on Oct. 9, but many believed that Mr. Bolsonaro in the second round would likely claim most of the votes that had gone to other right-wing candidates. Political analysts wondered whether Mr. Lula would have to endure the melancholy prospect of ending his career by handing power back to the Bolsonaro clan.
Mr. Lula’s personal trajectory—from the depths of poverty in Brazil’s Northeast through life as a migrant industrial worker in São Paulo, union leader, politician and president—is undeniably remarkable. But because of the various corruption scandals that occurred during his first two governments—in addition to his somewhat stubborn character—the president is strongly unpopular with about half of the Brazilian population. His campaign had been lukewarm, without passion both among allies or voters before its revival in the second round.
After finishing his next term, which begins on Jan. 5, 2027, Mr. Lula will have been in power for a total of 16 years, governing from 2003 to 2010 and from 2023 to 2030.
Mr. Bolsonaro received support from representatives of the business world and Brazil’s financial markets and the traditional right-wing sectors of Brazilian society. He also enjoyed the tacit support of the Trump administration in the United States.
After his first-round victory, the possibility of seeing Mr. Bolsonaro in power aroused fear, uncertainty and outrage among many Brazilians. “What happened was the rejection of Bolsonarism,” political commentator Maria Cristina Fernandes said on CBN radio.
Moderate voters from a broad swath of the political spectrum—even on the democratic right—came together to prevent the return of the Bolsonaro family to the presidency. Many feared that, if returned to power, these icons of the Latin American far right would find ways to govern indefinitely—taking control of the National Congress, the Supreme Court, the office of the prosecutor general, the federal police and the armed forces.
Mr. Bolsonaro is under investigation in a series of corruption scandals and had promised amnesty for his father and other participants in the attempted military coup if elected. He is also suspected of involvement with right-wing militias in the state of Rio de Janeiro. Two days after losing the election, he fled Brazil, first to Argentina before landing in Florida on Oct. 28.
In the end, Mr. Bolsonaro’s overconfidence weighed against him in the run-off vote. After coming out ahead in the first round, he behaved as though he had already won the election and began speculating about political appointments. Although he presented himself as more moderate than his father, Mr. Bolsonaro made statements that did not go over well with many Brazilians. In one debate, he called Mr. Lula “Nine Fingers”; the president suffered a workplace accident at age 17, losing his left little finger.
The campaign was marked by hundreds of thousands going out to the streets in protests on both sides; however, protests in favor of Mr. Lula gathered a wide spectrum of people from across Brazilian society.
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