By Geraldina Colotti, on October 26, 2026.
Brazil held its ground, one of the last bulwarks against the advance of the far right in Latin America. The veteran Lula pulled it off, winning the runoff with 64,256,232 votes against the 59,826,041 cast for the far right, represented by Flávio Bolsonaro: 51.79 percent versus 48.21 percent. It was a hard-fought victory contested down to the last vote, achieved at the end of a toxic election campaign that saw an extraordinary level of democratic participation. Compared to the first round on October 4—marked by a record abstention rate of 21.08 percent, equivalent to more than 33.4 million absent voters—the runoff saw a significant drop in abstentions, which fell to 19.11 percent, the lowest figure in the last twenty years. At the same time, blank and invalid votes accounted for just 3.23 percent, reaching a historic low for the century. Nearly three million voters returned to the polls, producing an unprecedented turnaround: Lula, who in the first round trailed with 45.16 percent compared to the reactionary candidate’s 47.03 percent, regained more than four million votes across the country thanks to the extraordinary popular mobilization and the momentum generated by the collective slogan Bora Virar (the rallying cry meaning “Let’s turn it around”).
An analysis of the vote reveals a deep territorial and class divide: on one side, the Southeast, the South, and the agribusiness sector of the Midwest, aligned with Bolsonaro’s bloc of reactionary interests; on the other, the Northeast—an impregnable stronghold and bastion of the left—where Lula crushed his opponent by overwhelming margins. In this landscape of polarization, the key to the turnaround was the public’s response to voter abstention: in the Southeast—the country’s economic heartland and most populous region—voter abstention fell by more than two percentage points compared to the first round, while the Northeast recorded the highest turnout and lowest abstention rate in the entire nation, guaranteeing the Workers’ Party the decisive pool of votes needed for the “sorpasso.”
An analysis of the votes cast by the 918,876 Brazilians registered to vote abroad in 134 countries—an electorate equivalent to just over 0.5 percent of the national voter registry—showed the Workers’ Party leader prevailing in five of the nine nations monitored across Asia and Oceania: in Australia with 6,017 votes to 3,465, in China with 502 to 267, in New Zealand with 418 to 101, in Singapore with 213 to 121, and in South Korea with 148 to 82, accompanied by strong support in Europe in Germany, France, Spain, Ireland, and the Netherlands. In contrast, the PL’s far right prevailed in symbolic strongholds such as Japan, with 28,538 votes to 7,098, and, most notably, in Israel, where Flávio Bolsonaro swept the vote, obtaining 80.8 percent of the valid votes—equivalent to 699 votes: a vivid reflection of the ideological and organizational fusion with political Zionism and the integralist right. Bolsonaro maintained narrow leads in Thailand (60 to 56), in Malaysia (44 to 41), and in the Philippines (39 to 27).
What was at stake transcended national borders. Brazil is not only a continental economic power but also possesses the world’s second-largest reserves of rare earth minerals, the planet’s largest source of freshwater, and immense offshore oil fields in the Pré-Sal: a tempting prize for extractive multinationals and the international financial plutocracy. The pro-Bolsonaro candidate Flávio Bolsonaro embodied the agenda of reaction and supremacism, epitomized by the chauvinistic and racist image circulated during the campaign that showed him leading a chained Black man on a leash. His platform combined savage neoliberalism with the promise of a heavy-handed approach modeled on Nayib Bukele’s punitive regime, unconditional realignment with the doctrine of the U.S. Southern Command through the Shield of the Americas, the relocation of the embassy to Jerusalem, and adherence to the Isaac Agreements.
This reactionary offensive was accompanied by sophisticated engineering of hybrid warfare and social fascistization, in a climate of confrontation characterized by personal attacks and propagandistic slander. The far right took the demonization of its adversary to the extreme, dusting off physical denigration directed at Lula—derisively nicknamed “nine fingers” because of the mutilation he suffered as a young factory worker—and flooding rallies and social media with insults about prisoners, criminals, and the alleged communist threat.
But the violence was not limited to verbal attacks: during the election campaign, Lula supporters were murdered by fanatical Bolsonaro supporters in Mato Grosso do Sul, and other PT leaders—such as a city councilwoman in Minas Gerais—were injured in ambushes carried out by paramilitary squads. This political aggression is part of a long history of corporate and paramilitary terrorism in rural areas, symbolized by the murder of the landless peasant and agroecological activist Valmir Mota de Oliveira—known as Keno—who was killed in 2007 by a private militia hired by the transnational corporation Syngenta Seeds to suppress protests against illegal GMO experiments. It was not until 2026 that the Superior Court of Justice definitively upheld the conviction and civil liability of the multinational for the use of illegal armed surveillance.
The interference of the multinational Meta and the Silicon Valley tech giants—integrated into the strategies of the Deep State and Trumpism—manipulated algorithmic feeds on Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp to favor Flávio Bolsonaro and penalize Lula’s campaign, forcing the PT’s lawyers to file a complaint regarding electoral abuse with the Superior Electoral Court. At the same time, the reactionary bloc relied on the ideological alliance between the patrimonial empire of evangelical neo-Pentecostalism—endowed with media conglomerates such as Record TV, hardline parliamentary caucuses, and pervasive WhatsApp networks—and transnational political Zionism, transforming the Prosperity Gospel into a cultural algorithm for the fascistization of consciousness and colonial subordination.
In this context, the threat of a coup and the Bolsonarists’ systemic refusal to recognize the election results—already announced by the losing candidate—do not represent mere propaganda tantrums, but rather the desperate reflection of a chain of extremely serious legal liabilities. Crucial investigations and legal proceedings weigh heavily on Flávio Bolsonaro and the entire family clan (some of whose members have already been elected): ranging from direct involvement in the planning and cover-up of the 2022 coup attempt to overthrow democratic institutions, to the scandal involving the theft and resale of state jewels gifted by foreign monarchies; from the falsification of vaccination records during the pandemic to the misuse and illegal use of state intelligence apparatus through the so-called “parallel ABIN,” not to mention the ironclad ties to urban paramilitary militias and the masterminds behind political crimes.
The strategy of chaos, the preventive delegitimization of the vote, and the constant threat of a coup are organically embedded in the process of internal fascistization and in the global preventive counterrevolution promoted by the radical right to shield its gang leaders from the courts and neutralize social conflict.
Faced with the mortal risk of a defeat that would have consolidated a reactionary belt alongside the ultra-reactionary turn taken by Javier Milei in Argentina and Daniel Noboa in Ecuador—thereby destroying any remnant of continental sovereign integration—Lula made a decisive social shift. In the final days leading up to the vote, the leftist leader gave new impetus to the reduced workweek with full pay, increased direct subsidies, the strengthening of the Unified Health System, the extension of the full school day in high schools, and the creation of a university version of the Pé-de-Meia program. On a strategic level, Lula championed technological sovereignty to create a national artificial intelligence system and break free from U.S. dominance, reaffirming the protection of strategic resources in the service of the people.
This concrete platform reignited grassroots activism. More than the support of international cultural figures, it was the self-organized digital popular army rallying around the slogan Bora Virar that shook up the campaign, mobilizing more than ten million contacts to break through media isolation and defeat the logic of algorithmic censorship.
Lula now faces a hostile institutional environment, with a Congress dominated by conservatives and the persistent threat of ongoing lawfare fueled by major media conglomerates such as O Globo and Folha de S.Paulo. However, the president has confirmed that he will govern without bowing to Washington’s dictates or the oligarchy’s blackmail, promoting multilateralism, the expansion of the BRICS, and South-South cooperation.
It is within this context of necessary pressure from below that the “BRICS of the Peoples” meeting is taking place, scheduled for November 11 and 12 in Brasília, running parallel to and engaging in critical dialogue with the intergovernmental summit on November 13 and 14. Not as an act of fruitless opposition, but as a parallel forum for genuine convergence where popular movements, class-based labor unions such as South Africa’s NUMSA metalworkers, India’s Dalit movements, the World March of Women, the MST, and international vanguards will come together to integrate the governments’ economic and trade agendas with the material demands of the people: to denounce the imperialism of the dollar and the IMF, to defeat neo-fascism and extractivism, and to build an anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal, and anti-colonialist alternative capable of uniting organized communities in the real transformation of the future.