Published in collaboration with the Alameda Institute

Buying Time
by Rodrigo Nunes

This was, without a doubt, the most dramatic election in the country’s history. Brazilian democracy has narrowly escaped its greatest threat since the end of the military dictatorship. Four years ago, Lula’s return was interpreted by many observers as a sign that the far right had been definitively defeated. This time we should confront the reality of the polls: the far right continues to grow. Bolsonarismo, as represented by the Liberal Party (PL), is now the most dominant force in Congress and in the Senate.

Because it continues and accelerates existing social and political trends, the far right possesses various structural advantages over the left. Its message matches the narrowed political horizons, dominant moral framework of individualism, and the lived experience of many. From an organisational standpoint, it is more deeply embedded in Brazil’s social fabric and finds in digital platforms a more favorable terrain. Despite its anti-establishment rhetoric, its practices are perfectly aligned with the interests of global and domestic elites, who are expediting wealth concentration at the expense of democracy, the environment, and the wellbeing of the world’s population.

Lula’s fourth victory has bought time for Brazilian democracy. Time to avert the Bolsonaristas’ plan for the subjugation of the judiciary to the executive and legislative branches. Time for the environment, because four more years of President Bolsonaro would have certainly set the Amazon on an irreversible path toward savanna-isation. Time for public services, for healthcare and education: a respite from the threat of cuts and privatisation. Time to protect institutions and public life from the growing infiltration and capture by organised crime.

But then, Lula 3.0 was only buying time. It was a government of normalisation, which was certainly welcome after nearly ten years of abnormality. But in a world where the natural course of events favours the far right, betting on normality is far from enough.

To begin reversing the far-right’s ascent, Lula 4.0 will have to maintain the urgency that emerged during the runoff. Both the popular mobilisation and the boldness that the federal government demonstrated in the final stretch of the election, when a series of measures previously regarded as impossible suddenly became unstoppable – including the ban on online betting, an increase in Bolsa Família benefits, reduction in the work week and a proposal to make public transport free on weekends and holidays. The priorities now include regulating Big Tech and reversing the hijacking of the federal budget by opaque congressional amendments.

It took a figure of Lula’s stature to defeat Bolsonarismo, twice – which proves the strength of the adversary as much as it does his. It follows that preparations for 2030 must begin right away, and that political strategy not be confused with electoral strategy. The left needs strong candidates for the presidency and the legislature in the upcoming elections; the new names that have emerged in this cycle point the way forward. More difficult will be constructing and solidifying a social base capable not only of electing such candidates but also of blocking those who will try to stymie government action.

Ultimately, what proved decisive were initiatives that originated outside campaign headquarters – the online “Lula Army” led by madcap technopolitical “general” André Janones, the Revelando documentary project, and the tenacity of millions of people who campaigned both online and offline. It was not the party, but the Lulismo ecosystem that won the election. While Lula, with this triumph, has definitively inscribed his name in the pages of Brazilian history, it is his image in the final stretch that holds the relevant lesson: that of an extraordinary individual with an extraordinary trajectory, without a doubt; but one who needed an extraordinary people to carry him to the finish line.

Rodrigo Nunes is an associate professor in modern and contemporary philosophy at PUC-Rio, a visiting fellow at the University of Essex, and an Alameda Associate.

Lula’s Army
by Anna Carolina Raposo de Mello

Lula’s reelection bid was initially characterised by unexceptional approval ratings, tepid support from his own base, and strong evidence of US interference in favour of his opponent. Still, throughout the first round, opinion polls consistently fell within a narrow range, mostly favouring Lula, only occasionally indicating a small lead for Flávio Bolsonaro. The president’s supporters seemed resigned to a tight victory and an uneventful continuity of government. This despite a general consensus that, during Lula’s third term, the PT had become disconnected from Brazil’s new working class, those small entrepreneurs and gig-economy workers with aspirations of individual prosperity and high-end consumption rather than inclusive public policy and participation in collective struggle. Flávio Bolsonaro’s side, conversely, capitalised on the widespread desire for change.

Then, as the first-round results came in, the scale of the far-right threat became apparent: Bolsonaro led by over two million votes. In the Senate, his coalition won an astonishing 45 of 81 seats; in the Chamber of Deputies, right-wing parties secured 303 of 513 seats. Among newly elected governors, at least 14 out of 27 were bolsonaristas.

The result shocked Lula’s campaign team, prompting younger politicians to replace the old guard who had run the first round. The most effective initiative, however, emerged online, and was led by Lula’s supporters – including those from outside of the PT: artists, athletes, lawyers, academics. Its figurehead was a young federal deputy from the state of Minas Gerais, André Janones, who created a WhatsApp channel, “Lula’s Army”, to unify the campaign messaging and engage millions of social media users. In just three weeks, the channel gathered over 10.8 million “soldiers”. Several other politicians joined the initiative by launching parallel online campaigns.

Their initial achievement was to ward off an enervating pessimism among Lula’s supporters. Over time, they helped achieve three more decisive objectives.

First, they shifted the dominant online discourse, which in recent years has been dominated by Bolsonarista ideology. Far-right social media influencers have spread a gospel of individual prosperity and personal betterment, proselytising on matters of lifestyle, finance, consumption and even faith. In the realm of politics, they set the agenda with incendiary proclamations that forced opponents – and even Lula’s government – to respond with ineffective debunkings. In the past three weeks, these dynamics were reversed and a new level of trust, adhesion, mobilisation and engagement was created within Lulista networks.

Second, the digital campaign helped the Lulista camp to articulate its own message in a clear, simple and accessible manner. Lulista campaigners learned to listen to the grievances and dissatisfaction of citizens who rejected the president – and to respond to them sincerely, without resorting to exasperated rebuke. Exhausted by the cost of living and frustrated by a pervasive sense of rising crime and deepening insecurity, many Brazilians felt that Lula’s economic and social policies hadn’t reached them, and they needed to air their disappointment. Lulista supporters also underscored Flavio’s corruption scandals and connections with paramilitary mafias, which tanked the credibility of his feeble (and swiftly retracted) austerity agenda and promise of a “mano dura” approach to crime.

The third and perhaps most important achievement was to successfully complement online discourse with offline outreach and street demonstrations. Lula’s voters were incentivised to talk face to face with other undecided or disinclined voters. Gathering discursive ammunition for these debates was fundamental, and the arguments and tactics now sprang up all over digital channels to back these in-person interactions. The unified networks, not necessarily organised by the official campaign, helped mobilise demonstrations across the country. This visible commitment, the voters’ public presence in such astonishing numbers, was decisive. They won the election and will help shield the result from Flávio’s absurd yet predictable judicial challenge.

The incredible response by Brazil’s democratic camp – which included some of the PT’s opponents, who nevertheless lent their support to prevent the rise of an autocrat – helped pry open the far-right’s armour. It is the progressive camp’s duty to learn from the electoral experience.

Anna Raposo de Mello is a Researcher and Research Coordinator at Alameda.

The New Brazil
by Juliano Fiori

Brazil’s presidential run-off confounds for its novelty. It is the first time since the country returned to democratic rule that a candidate trailing after the first round has gone on to win. This resulted partly from an unprecedented drop in abstentions between the two rounds.

It also confounds for how strikingly it has defied expectations. Lula required votes not only from many who abstained in the first round, but also from many who had then voted for Flávio Bolsonaro. Brazen interference from the United States – both Washington and big tech firms – during and prior to the elections conjured the spectre of a coup (which has not entirely dissipated). While the polling booths were still open, news emerged that right-wing mayors were engaged in widespread voter suppression, through targeted suspension or curtailment of public transport in PT strongholds.

The polls all pointed to a Flávio victory, despite tracking increasing support for Lula following the first round. (Flávio and his allies now point to divergence between the polls and the results to sustain their claims of electoral fraud.) Lula required an insurgent, poll-defying vote of the kind that, for a decade, has delivered right-wing victories across capitalist democracies.

How did he pull it off? In part, through his own political genius, his combination of a wizardly disregard for apparent constraints with a classically Brazilian cordiality. But his victory was primarily the result of a massive organic mobilisation. Following a very lacklustre first-round operation, thousands of people, both groups and individuals, began stumping for Lula, autonomously or semi-autonomously, effectively decentralising his campaign. They made polished documentaries – most notably, those in the ‘Revelando’ series – and short, influencer-style videos that called out Flávio’s criminality. They took to the streets, in historically large rallies across the country, where negative campaigning largely gave way to hopeful projections of a turnaround.

They prevailed. And so begins Lula’s final chapter – with euphoria deferring exhaustion, and relief checked by not a little perplexity.

The rallies I attended in the run-up to the second round were impressively joyful, if tinged with melancholia. A palpable belief in victory comingled with the awareness that the end of an era had arrived. Lula’s final election campaign; Lula, indisputably one of the most important figures in Brazilian political history. Most of us have not known politics without him.

There is also something ideologically melancholic about Lulismo, despite the hope it still inspires among its adherents. Lula’s grand project, economic inclusion and class conciliation, was originally enabled by the 2000s commodities boom. Yet over time, the ideal of expanding access to consumption has become detached from the reality – or, at least, the common experience – of a new Brazil. Since returning to power in 2022, Lula has failed to project a new social horizon.

In the new Brazil, individualistic aspirations, understood in resistance to state institutions, are fomented by the precarious informalisation of labour and by theologies of prosperity, propagated by billionaire evangelical denominations; frontier industries, agribusiness above all, produce extensive networks of dependent, and often illicit, economic activity; the subcontracting of core governmental functions to private enterprises has led to a fragmentation of sovereignty, which in turn has empowered parastate and criminal entities.

These social transformations produced the moment for the political ascension of Jair Bolsonaro, who represents the worst of the old Brazil: he is the abortive apprentice of the torture chamber who faults the military dictatorship only for not killing enough. Flávio, his son, represents the worst of the new Brazil: he is a racketeer, whose interests are bound up with parastate death squads and extortion schemes. However, Bolsonarismo, the movement that bears their name, is not attached to their political fates. With Jair serving 27 years in prison, and Flávio defeated, Bolsonarismo without Bolsonaro is now a real prospect – one that is not necessarily less menacing.

Lula is not of the new Brazil. However, as the most adept manager of the social transformations of the neoliberal period, he has served as its midwife. Perhaps the greatest irony is that the consumer class his governments did most to consolidate – referred to as “class C” by Brazilian social scientists – has swung most decisively from Lulismo to Bolsonarismo over the last decade. To succeed in this, the final chapter of his political career, Lula will have to develop a policy programme that appeals directly to this constituency. The challenges are significant – and not only because, following these elections, he will have to contend with an even more hostile Congress, but also because the national political system itself is maladapted to the new Brazil.

The PT must take many lessons from the second round, particularly from the friction between its conventions as a mass party and the autonomous activities of the campaign. Yet opposition to the far right elsewhere can take inspiration from the past few weeks. Indeed, if Brazilian capitalism has long been in the vanguard of the global march to catastrophe, now accelerated by far-right formations, then it stands to reason that Brazil can also become a laboratory for a politics that contests it.

Juliano Fiori is the director of Alameda.

Three Winners
by Miguel Lago

Brazil’s 2026 election has three big winners.

The first and most obvious is President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Lula’s extraordinary second-round comeback once again demonstrated his unique political strength. He possesses something almost mystical: an ability to connect with millions of Brazilians that transcends parties, ideologies and coalitions. He is much bigger than the left. Having contested seven presidential elections and won four, he has done more than anyone to shape national politics since democracy returned. This will almost certainly be his final presidential term.

The second winner is, paradoxically, Jair Messias Bolsonaro. Even from jail, he helped elect deputies, senators, and governors – further illustration that Bolsonarismo is not merely a conservative reaction, but a revolutionary movement seeking to transform the institutions, values and foundations of Brazilian society. Since 2018, it has consistently expanded its base and consolidated its influence. 2026 was no exception. To defeat Bolsonaro in elections is by no means to defeat Bolsonarismo.

The third and most important winner is Brazilian civil society. That Lula gained approximately 10.4 million votes between the two rounds should not be mistaken for an endorsement of his government or as an expression of personal devotion (though it is a bit of both). Much of this mobilisation represented a rejection of Bolsonarismo.

The PT ran a remarkably poor first-round campaign at the legislative, gubernatorial and presidential level. What transformed the election was not the party machinery, but an extraordinary mobilisation of civil society. In effect, a counterrevolutionary movement emerged across the country, bringing together people of different ideological persuasions. Lula might have become the movement’s standard-bearer, but he didn’t create it, and he doesn’t own it. This victory belongs not to the party but to society.

During his third term, Lula often governed Brazil as though it were still 2010. But Brazilian society had changed profoundly, due in part to an extraordinarily rapid religious transition away from Catholic predominance and towards evangelical ascendance. Meanwhile, the far right expanded its cultural and institutional power.

In his final term, Lula will face a predominantly hostile Congress. Bolsonarismo-aligned senators will pressure the Supreme Court justices via impeachment motions, making the judiciary a less reliable strategic ally.

Lula must therefore seek political strength beyond the three branches of government – in society itself. The objective must be to reduce the political monopoly of congressional elites and redistribute democratic power to the population. That requires a participatory democracy, with referendums, popular consultations, and institutions that allow citizens to exercise power beyond elections.

Brazil’s old political arrangements are exhausted. The democratic transition produced extraordinary achievements, but also a governance system increasingly captured by political parties and congressional bargaining. Institutions designed to sustain democracy have gradually contributed to its erosion. If Bolsonarismo represents a revolution against the constitutional order established in 1988, the only viable response is a democratic counterrevolution. Not to restore the old order, but to reinvent it. That is to say: Lula’s historic task is to prepare the transition from the Sixth to a Seventh Republic.

Miguel Lago is Executive Director of the Institute for Health Policy Studies, a Visiting Professor at Princeton, and an Alameda Associate.