Brazil’s election tests Lula’s leftist legacy against Bolsonaro’s right-wing movement

Brazilians return to the polls on Sunday to choose between two candidates campaigning on sharply different versions of the country amid growing concerns over crime, corruption, and a broader rightward shift among Latin American voters.

Leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, 80, entered this month’s presidential election as the favorite by nearly every poll, hoping to secure a fourth term and extend a political career that has shaped the country for more than two decades.

He instead has found himself in a runoff with Flávio Bolsonaro, the eldest son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, whose stronger-than-expected performance in a first round of voting upended predictions and turned one of Latin America’s most prominent left-wing leaders into the election’s underdog.

The octogenarian’s challenge is to secure another term after a decades-long political career, while Bolsonaro, 45, attempts to keep his first-round momentum and carry it into a final victory.

The outcome of Sunday’s vote will have repercussions far beyond Brazil. As right-wing governments gain ground across Latin America, the runoff could determine whether the region’s largest country becomes an ally of the Trump administration — if Flavio accomplishes something his father could not in 2022: defeat Lula at the ballot box.

A first-round upset

According to Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court, Bolsonaro secured 2.2 million votes more than Lula in the first round of voting. Neither candidate reached the majority needed to win outright, forcing both campaigns to compete for a shrinking pool of undecided voters while trying to mobilize their supporters in a country deeply divided over its political future.

The result exposed vulnerabilities in Lula’s reelection bid, from frustration over the cost of living and crime to difficulties mobilizing parts of his traditional base. It also showed that Jair Bolsonaro’s movement remains strong, even as the former president serves a prison sentence for attempting to overturn his 2022 defeat.

Crime, the economy and last-minute shifts

Public safety has emerged as one of the defining issues of the campaign. A September Quaest/Pax survey found that 28 percent of Brazilians saw violence as the country’s biggest problem, followed by corruption at 22 percent and the economy at 19 percent.

“That is ground that strongly favors the Bolsonaros, because they have made a tough approach on crime their flagship issue from the beginning,” said Brian Winter, editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly and vice president of policy at Americas Society/Council of the Americas.

Flávio has promised to designate major criminal factions as terrorist groups, expand prisons and lower the age of criminal responsibility. “Those who think I’m radical on public security haven’t seen anything yet,” he said October 13, adding that even El Salvador’s infamous hardline approach under President Nayib Bukele was not enough.

Lula has struggled to reconcile his party’s traditional positions with demands for tougher action. A widely circulated clip of him saying last year that drug traffickers were also victims of drug users reinforced what Winter called a “longstanding perception that the Brazilian left is soft on crime.” Lula later acknowledged that he had expressed himself poorly.

In last Sunday’s televised debate, Bolsonaro pressed Lula over temporary prison leave. Lula defended rehabilitation but said serious offenders should not qualify, then questioned whether Bolsonaro would pardon his father. Flávio did not respond directly during the exchange, but he has repeatedly said he wants Jair Bolsonaro to accompany him up the presidential palace ramp at his inauguration.

That exchange followed what is seen as the runoff campaign’s most striking shifts: in an effort to appeal to voters, Lula signaled support for lowering the age of criminal responsibility from 18 to 16 for certain serious crimes, though he opposed including it in a pending constitutional amendment.

Winter described the shift as “as close to anathema as you can get in his workers’ party,” which has opposed such a change for decades.

“Lula is now yielding in the campaign’s final days because he recognizes that this may be his biggest vulnerability,” he said, adding that the change illustrates how far Lula is willing to move toward more conservative voters despite a history of resistance to such measures.

Lula has faced criticism about the state of the economy and affordability. During his first two terms, a commodities boom helped lift millions of Brazilians out of poverty and into the middle class.

This time, many voters say they feel little progress. Lula can point to low unemployment and easing inflation, but those indicators have not changed perceptions for households struggling with everyday prices.

Winter compared the dynamic to the 2024 US presidential election, when favorable statistics failed to overcome frustration with prices under President Joe Biden and then-Vice President Kamala Harris.

“The headline numbers for the economy look good,” Winter said. “But everyday people keep saying that they don’t feel like the economy is prospering. They feel like their standard of living has declined.”

Still, many voters remain loyal to Lula because of the social gains made during his first two terms, while fearing that a Bolsonaro presidency could roll back social rights.

Flávio has sought to counter those concerns by distancing himself from some traditionally conservative positions. On October 16, Congress promulgated a constitutional amendment ending Brazil’s traditional six-day workweek, gradually reducing the maximum workweek without cutting pay. After previously opposing the proposal, Bolsonaro reversed course and voted in favor.

“This is another case of the Bolsonaros being ideologically flexible enough to get elected,” Winter said. “Both sides are doing this in the race’s final days. It’s breathtaking.”

But if there’s one key group both candidates need to win over, both experts and campaigns agree: it’s women.

Women and religion: two crucial divides

Women account for nearly 53 percent of registered voters and have been more resistant to Bolsonaro-aligned candidates than men. An October 15 Datafolha survey put Lula ahead among women by 49 percent to 40 percent, while Flávio led among men by 52 percent to 40 percent.

“Women are the key demographic,” Winter said.

Malu Gatto, an associate professor of Latin American politics at University College London, said the gender gap widened after Jair Bolsonaro emerged in 2018, as men gravitated toward the right and women became more supportive of the Workers’ Party.

Both campaigns have also addressed violence against women, particularly femicide, after several brutal cases drew national attention. Brazil recorded 1,571 femicides in 2025, the highest number since the crime was defined in law in 2015, according to the Brazilian Forum on Public Safety.

According to Gatto, the right traditionally emphasizes tougher criminal penalties for aggressors, while the left places greater emphasis on protection and support for victims, including shelters and specialized services.

In his first televised advertisement, Flávio placed his wife and daughters front and center. “At home, they’re the ones in charge. And that’s a good thing,” he said – a notable choice for a political movement whose support has traditionally been stronger among men.

Former first lady Michelle Bolsonaro, elected to the Senate this month, has also become key to recruiting women into the Liberal Party. For that reason, a public feud she had with Flávio was one of the most troubling parts of his campaign; although it was later resolved, it underscored the group’s importance in the election.

“Michelle has her own electoral capital, among women and among evangelicals,” Gatto said. “She has legitimacy with women and evangelicals in a way Flávio doesn’t.”

Evangelicals, a growing demographic in the predominately Catholic country, have turned into an important voting bloc for the right. Datafolha found Bolsonaro leading among evangelicals by 62 percent to 29 percent, while Lula led among Catholics by 52 percent to 42 percent.

The Southeast, Northeast and turnout

Geography will also matter. Roughly 40 percent of Brazil’s electorate lives in the Southeast, where Flávio won 51.4 percent of valid votes in the first round, compared with 39.7 percent for Lula. The right-wing senator carried all four states in the region, including São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro — the country’s three largest electoral states.

Minas Gerais has backed the eventual winner in every direct presidential election since 1989. “Its mix of industrialized cities and poorer rural communities makes it a microcosm of Brazil’s political divisions,” said Lucas Fernandes, a political analyst at consulting firm BMJ.

Lula narrowly beat Jair Bolsonaro there in 2022. This time, Flávio won with 48.24 percent of valid votes against Lula’s 43.33 percent — a difference of nearly 590,000 votes.

In Northeast, Lula’s stronghold, his first-round margin was smaller than in previous elections. His share of valid votes in Maranhão fell by nearly five percentage points — the sharpest decline in the region — underscoring the challenge of mobilizing his traditional base.

But the challenge isn’t just changing voters’ minds — it’s mobilizing those who stayed home in the first round.

One in five eligible Brazilian voters abstained, a potentially consequential group in a race where just 2.2 million votes separated the candidates. And with 94 percent of voters telling Datafolha they had already made up their minds, getting supporters to the polls could prove just as important as persuading the few who remain undecided.

What went wrong for Lula — and what has changed?

The first-round result raised an uncomfortable question for Lula’s campaign and political analysts alike: How did a president who defeated Jair Bolsonaro end up losing to his son, a candidate initially considered less politically appealing than his father?

“I think the most important takeaway is that today’s Brazil is turning right,” Winter said, adding that voters have become “more conservative over the last 10 to 15 years.”

The shift reflects a broader electoral trend across Latin America, where several presidential elections since April 2025 — in Ecuador, Bolivia, Honduras, Chile, Costa Rica, Colombia and Peru — have resulted in victories for right-wing or center-right candidates.

A July Datafolha survey found 44 percent of Brazilians leaning right or center-right in their political values, compared with 39 percent on the left or center-left, reversing the balance measured in 2022.

Fernandes points out the prevalence of tactical voting — when voters abandon their preferred candidate for one with a better chance of winning or defeating a rival — as an explanation for the first-round surprise in early October.

“All the alternative candidates, at least the competitive ones, were on the right,” Fernandes told CNN. “So Flávio was much more likely than Lula to benefit from that shift in tactical voting, because he is ideologically much closer to the other candidates who were in the race.”

Another factor, Fernandes said, is the deep rejection of Lula’s Workers’ Party, which runs strong among Brazilians who don’t identify with the Bolsonaro movement but are determined to stop Lula’s reelection. That sentiment is even stronger now than in 2022, when Lula benefited from widespread opposition to Jair Bolsonaro after a presidency marked by controversy over his government’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Fernandes also points to Lula’s campaign underestimating the importance of social media, while the right has long made it central to its strategy. “The right understood this and applied it on several fronts, not just to Flávio’s candidacy, while the left failed to make that transition,” Fernandes said.

“The most important venue for Brazilian politics today is WhatsApp,” Winter agreed, describing how family groups and private conversations influenced by memes and short videos can shape decisions in the final days of a campaign.

The difference was reflected in campaign spending. According to financial disclosures filed with Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court, paid social media was Flávio’s second-largest campaign expense in the first round, and Lula’s sixth-largest.

Corruption and political fatigue

Part of the shift to the right in Brazil is due to the association of the left with corruption, although scandals have shadowed both campaigns.

During Sunday’s debate, Lula challenged Bolsonaro to open his financial records and pressed him over his ties to Daniel Vorcaro, the former head of the collapsed Banco Master, whose alleged connections to powerful figures have embroiled Brazil’s political and judicial establishment, including the Supreme Court. Flávio, meanwhile, accused Lula of corruption and raised allegations involving the president’s eldest son, known as Lulinha. Lula’s previous corruption convictions were annulled in 2021.

On Monday, Lula said he would submit documents to Brazil’s electoral court authorizing the disclosure of his banking and telephone records, along with those of his five children, and said it would release the data if Flávio Bolsonaro did the same for himself, his family, and his businesses. In response, Flávio said he would accept the challenge if Lula also opened the banking and tax records of his former chief of staff and disclosed first lady Janja da Silva’s expenses along with presidential corporate-card spending.

The corruption allegations are deepening political fatigue in Brazil, say experts. “It reinforces the disgust and apathy that Brazilians feel with their political system as a whole,” Winter told CNN.

Beyond Brazil

US President Donald Trump has praised Flávio Bolsonaro’s electoral performance but stopped short of formally endorsing him, even as his administration’s tariffs on Brazil and pressure over Jair Bolsonaro’s prosecution have strained relations with Lula.

The tensions surfaced again during Sunday’s debate. Lula accused the Bolsonaro family of aligning itself with US interests at Brazil’s expense, while Flávio rejected the charge and criticized Lula’s foreign policy.

A Bolsonaro victory could bring Latin America’s largest economy closer to the US, particularly on security and organized crime, and strengthen a wave of conservative governments elected across the region. Lula has instead emphasized multilateralism, ties with the Global South and China — Brazil’s largest export market — and his resistance to Trump’s tariff measures as a defense of national sovereignty.

The next president will face a more conservative Congress. A narrow result could also test the country’s stability after Jair Bolsonaro’s attempts to overturn his 2022 defeat led to the January 8, 2023, attacks on government institutions. Bolsonaro denies wrongdoing.

For Lula, a win would mean another political comeback. For Flávio, it would mark the return of his father’s movement to the presidency despite Jair Bolsonaro’s conviction and imprisonment.