By Atilio A. Boron on October 27, 2026
Flávio Bolsonaro was defeated by Lula da Silva in the runoff election. Andre Borges. EFE
The landslide victory of Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva in this Sunday’s historic runoff election offers numerous lessons for future electoral processes in the region, particularly in Argentina. Although polls predicted a “dead heat” and, in some cases, major Brazilian media outlets speculated that Flávio Bolsonaro might hold a slight lead, the results at the polls shattered those self-serving and far from innocent conjectures. Lula won by a landslide: 51.8% to his rival’s 48.2%. In absolute numbers, he received some 4,400,000 more votes than his opponent—a difference equivalent to 3.45% of the total electorate. Lula’s victory was a political feat of enormous proportions destined to exert an influence that extends beyond Brazil and Latin America.
What are these lessons? First, that the existence of a well-organized political-electoral apparatus with the ability to mobilize voters can bring people to the polls who, under other circumstances, would not have voted. The abstention rate in this runoff was 19.2%, a two-point decrease from the 21.2% in the first round and the lowest level since the 2006 elections. But to achieve this, the PT had to leave its offices and go out into the streets to win over the public, something it failed to do in the first round. PT voters stayed home, influenced by the sense of triumph emanating from Brasília. But faced with the threat posed by a Bolsonaro victory in the runoff, they decided to go to the polls—and there you have the results.
“The field” is a crucial arena in any electoral process and must never be abandoned or sidelined in favor of television studios or the media in general. That was one of the most serious mistakes the PT made in the first round.
Second lesson: unlike just a few years ago, today there are “other territories” where battles must be fought. I am referring to social media, a crucial space controlled by a handful of reactionary tech magnates who, through their algorithms, command sophisticated systems for communication and the manipulation of perceptions and will. The prevailing pessimism among broad sectors of the left and the progressive movement regarding this new reality was based on a false premise: that citizens are defenseless against the machinations and manipulations of algorithms on various social media platforms. Lula’s epic comeback disproved the universal validity of that premise. Certainly, Meta (WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, and Threads, in addition to Meta AI), along with X, are factors that can “shape” the opinion of broad sectors of the electorate, but their effectiveness is far from irresistible and can be countered if popular organizations and forces develop an effective strategy dedicated to neutralizing those intentions. This requires the formation of a large contingent of digital guerrillas willing to wage battle in the digital realm.
The PT (and Lula) ignored this in the first round, but corrected course in the second, yielding the results we celebrate today. This sudden realization of the importance of the other territorial space—the digital realm—was spurred by the overwhelming success of Ana Elisa Santos Silva, a brilliant Afro-Brazilian woman just 21 years old who received the highest number of votes in history when she was elected as a federal deputy for the state of Minas Gerais. And she did so without her party’s support, but rather through tireless, daily activism on social media that resulted in nearly two million followers on Instagram. This was a wake-up call that shook the PT leadership to its core and convinced Lula and the PT that this territory—the digital realm—had been recklessly left in the hands of the enemy.
Another young man, federal deputy André Janones, who had been working hard on social media but without much response from the party leadership, emboldened by Ana Elisa’s success, took it upon himself to organize the “Lula Army” on WhatsApp andmanaged, in just a few weeks, to assemble a strike force of ten million volunteers. Two very clear lessons: return to the grassroots and penetrate the digital space. These are two of the most important keys to understanding Lula’s historic victory.
The momentous significance of his victory will be analyzed in subsequent articles, but there is one point I do not want to fail to highlight right now, while the moment is still fresh, and this is the third lesson: imperialism is not omnipotent, and nothing would be worse than resigning ourselves to its threats or thinking that there is no possibility of resisting its rapacious designs. Trump threatened the Iranian “regime” in a thousand ways, and now even the U.S. military itself acknowledges that it has lost that war. For more than sixty years, they have been trying to destroy the Cuban Revolution, and they have not been able to do so—nor will they ever be able to.
In the case of Brazil, Trump shouted, blackmailed, threatened, and pressured in every conceivable way to prevent Lula’s victory, but he could not neutralize the will of the people. He supported the Bolsonaros—father and sons—with all his might and suffered a humiliating defeat. Not only Brazil, but all of Latin America, will never be the “empire’s backyard.” The empire is not invincible; let’s leave that belief to the trash they churn out in Hollywood. There will be moments of greater or lesser resistance, but ultimately the people, sooner rather than later, will rebel.
The surge of the far right, which seemed poised to sweep across the entire continent, crashed against the will and patriotism of the Brazilian people. With that, the region’s two largest economies and two most populous countries—Brazil and Mexico—stand as impregnable fortresses against Washington’s ambitions. It is up to us in Argentina, next year, to join this movement and put an end to the colonialist project embodied by the once-hyperactive and now-silent X user, Javier Milei, and the evildoers who accompany him.
Source: Pagina 12, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English