Brazil's incumbent left-wing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has won the second round of the presidential election held on Sunday, 25 October. Brazil's Superior Electoral Court announced that, with 98.7% of the votes counted, the 80-year-old leader had mathematically secured victory, giving him a fourth term in office.
In a neck-and-neck race, Lula took 51.75% of the vote, while his rival, 45-year-old right-wing senator Flávio Bolsonaro, received 48.25%. Brazil has around 160 million registered voters. As the results came in, Lula's supporters began celebrating in the streets of São Paulo.
Flávio Bolsonaro is the son of former right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro, who was sentenced to 27 years in prison for plotting a coup after losing the 2022 election. The younger Bolsonaro had been seen as the favourite after finishing first in the 4 October first round with a stronger-than-expected result, helped by the fact that several eliminated candidates were right-wing alternatives.
US President Donald Trump had described the first-round result as a "very big" victory. Lula's government accused the United States of interfering in Brazil's elections, a claim Washington dismissed as "baseless". While much of Latin America has elected right-wing leaders aligned with the Trump administration, the runoff appears to have kept the region's largest country and economy off that path.
After the first round, Lula's supporters staged large rallies to boost turnout. Speaking to a large crowd on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro on Saturday, 24 October, Lula said the vote was a matter of "sovereignty" and that people would choose between someone who kisses the Brazilian flag and someone who kisses the American flag. He said he would win for "a simple reason": "It is true that the people want change, but the people want to move forward. They do not want to go backwards."
