BRAZIL: A historic ‘turnaround’
Beatriz Bissio, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro | Oct 27, 2026
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The world is discussing, studying, and, to a large extent, celebrating President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva’s historic victory in the election second round. It carries an importance that clearly transcends Brazilian borders and even Latin America, gaining an international dimension. We will analyse the reasons for this shortly.
However, we will begin by focusing on the electoral result itself. Several elements have already been highlighted that allow us to call this victory historic. Let us look at a few: it is the first time in Brazil’s history that a president has been democratically elected four times. It is the first time a candidate who finished second in the first round emerged victorious in the second. And this election saw the lowest rate of abstentions, blank, and null votes since the restoration of democracy.
The result of the first round, with a 2% margin victory for candidate Flávio Bolsonaro over President Lula, has many explanations. Starting with the explicit support from the Trump administration—through statements, but above all through intelligence information, money (there is talk of millions of dollars), technological resources, the availability of fake profiles on social media spreading lies and fear, and various coercive measures across several regions of the country. But it is also explained by errors within President Lula’s campaign and his third term in office (later recognised by him).
Both during his administration and in the election campaign, President Lula neglected the strategic issue of communication. There was no initiative on the part of the government to explain to the population the difficult relationship with a Congress dominated by the far-right opposition and by a highly corrupt segment of Brazilian politics. As a result, part of the population did not understand that if many possible advancements were not achieved, it was due to the arduous negotiations required of the Executive branch to pass even a few of its initiatives. Social media networks took advantage of this to persistently promote the President’s “failure” to fulfill his promises.
There were also a few initiatives aimed at exposing the blatant external interference throughout his entire mandate—largely instigated by one of the former president’s sons, Eduardo Bolsonaro, who fled to the United States while being pursued by the justice system for crimes committed in Brazil. He used his access to the Trump administration to encourage the application of tariffs and other sanctions against his own country.
If these were the mistakes made during the government’s term, the election campaign failed to address these issues or mobilize voters in the streets. The demonstrations of support for the President, which were very meaningful and important, lacked the massive scale that would later be seen in the second-round campaign (driven by self-mobilization of the people, as we will explain later). In other words, President Lula’s first-round campaign failed to recognize the importance of including in its speeches a denunciation of the far-right’s actions, the foreign interference throughout the entire governing period, and the threat that a victory by Flávio Bolsonaro would pose to the country’s sovereignty and to the entire ongoing social project. Somehow, there seemed to be a certain conviction that Flávio Bolsonaro was such an unqualified candidate and represented such an obscurantist future that he could not possibly gather enough support to lead him to victory.
It was a mistake! The President himself, facing the results of the first round, admitted his surprise: “I thought I would win in the first round,” he stated in one of his first declarations that night. While the President and his advisors were holding a closed-door meeting the day after the first-round defeat to evaluate the results, in the early morning hours of that Monday, a massive demonstration initiated by students from the Fluminense Federal University, in the city of Niterói (adjacent to Rio de Janeiro), surprisingly began filling the streets. The initiative was rapidly replicated in other cities, including by high school students. Over the course of the night, young people—alerted to the danger of the far-right’s advance—had been contacting student unions across the country with the slogan to occupy the streets. The proposal was not to leave them until victory was achieved in the second round. The youth, even before the President himself and his campaign team and advisors, had understood that their future was compromised by a potential obscurantist government, hostile to education, science, and freedom, and openly violent.
Young people realised that to reverse the defeat, it was necessary to appeal to what had been missing in the first round: a combined mobilisation on the streets and on social media. On social media, to unmask and respond to every lie from the far-right and to alert voters who were disillusioned or frustrated with Lula’s government and anxious for change about the dangers of handing the country over to a president who would transform Brazil into a colony of the Trump administration—and who, domestically, through his ties to the “milícias” (paramilitary groups), would resort to all types of violence to remain in power. On the streets, because an immense face-to-face effort, an overwhelming and striking presence, and a direct dialogue were needed—with friends, neighbours, delivery drivers, app users, and anyone else—to escape the trap of the algorithms and convince people, through direct dialogue, of the importance of an “electoral turnaround” to save the country from the far-right.
The pioneering initiative of the youth spread, grew, and reached levels of mobilisation never seen in Brazil since the early moments of redemocratization—older generations even compared these demonstrations to the ones held during the famous “Diretas Já” (Direct Elections Now) campaign, which demanded the right to vote following the first political liberalisation initiatives in the 1980s. To this overflowing energy on the streets was added the role of social media, primarily under the leadership of a young federal deputy (now re-elected) from Minas Gerais, André Janones, himself a major figure in using these platforms to counter the far-right. Suffice it to say that before the election, Janones had 50,000 followers on his channel. Yet, with great boldness, Janones called upon Brazilians to join him in what he called “Lula’s Army,” asking them to follow his channel, from which he began guiding those without much social media experience on how to act, how to share a post, how to help an initiative grow online, and so forth. As a result, in less than 48 hours, “Lula’s Army” surpassed ten million members, who distributed information, exposed lies, set slogans, convened virtual and physical meetings, breaking all algorithms and neutralising the open interference of META and other platforms that were trying to take down pro-Lula initiatives while favouring Flávio Bolsonaro.
Faced with the impact of this dual spontaneous mobilisation, which caught the president’s campaign coordination and advisors by surprise, Lula himself decided to participate in the street rallies called by the students, join the “Army” Janones had organised, and speak with him daily. He also accepted advice to record daily self-filmed videos on various topics and take the opportunity to denounce the behaviour of the platforms that were boycotting him. Figures, artists, communicators, politicians, and academics joined the “Army.” Particularly important was the appeal from many over the age of 70 (the legal limit in Brazil for mandatory voting), calling on the “more experienced” not to fail to go to the polls on Sunday the 25th, because the possibility of saving Brazil’s democracy and sovereignty was also in their hands.
All this effort and this massive presence on the streets and networks began to be captured by some polling institutes, which timidly started to entertain the possibility of a “turnaround.” And since Brazilian electoral law permits debates between candidates up until 48 hours before the election, by Friday, October 23rd, during the final debate, one could already feel in the air that “something” was different. On the other hand, the far-right candidate’s lack of preparation and rudeness became blatantly evident once again during that debate when he called President Lula “nine-fingered.” It was this insult that led the President to use that vulgarity to address workers in particular, confirming that yes, he had lost a finger at age 17—an age at which he should not even legally have been working a night shift, exhausted by long workdays he had to endure to help his family. He compared that experience with that of thousands of Brazilians living a similar fate, for whom he would expand his social policies. It was a deeply poignant moment, yet one that did not dispel the anxiety being felt: there was a widespread awareness that Brazil is a highly coveted prize and that the “hybrid war” unleashed to support Flávio Bolsonaro and everything he represents was still ongoing…
The scenes during voting hours on Sunday were illuminating of the feeling that had taken hold of the Brazilian people: grandchildren carrying their grandparents to vote, neighbours organising to give rides to those who had difficulty travelling to their polling places, indigenous populations in the Amazon travelling by boat and on foot to reach voting locations, airports packed from the early hours of the morning for travel that would allow people to vote in their registered districts… and very importantly: young people taking over the streets. Ultimately, these scenes will remain in the collective memory for decades and will be passed down through stories from grandparents to their grandchildren in the future… It was not by chance that President Lula, in one of his first statements after the victory, affirmed: In my other three terms, the victory was achieved by the Workers’ Party. In this fourth term, the victory was an achievement of the Brazilian people! And the victory was resounding: a margin of over five million votes over his opponent!
The ‘turnaround’ was rightly celebrated across all latitudes: Brazil showed that, with a people organised and mobilised on the streets and on social media, it is possible to defeat algorithms and Donald Trump’s rivers of money, and make its will prevail. An iconic victory. A united people can subvert the fate meant to be imposed on them, no matter how powerful the adversary. In fact, there is no shortage of lessons in the past (Vietnam, to this day an example) and in the present (Iran, Palestine!).
However, history also warns us that the reaction is usually brutal. Mobilisation on the streets and online must continue. President Lula’s fourth administration will face great difficulty in advancing its agenda. The majority won in the first round by the far-right in both houses of Congress will be one of the trenches from which they will seek to impede the President’s actions. But the “popular hybrid guerrilla warfare” on the streets and networks will be the decisive element for the people to follow every step of what is to come and provide the militant support that the President will need.
Needless to say, for the Global South and for BRICS—that is, for an international scenario pointing toward a historical project where international law, respect for human rights, and the possibility of restructuring the UN prevail once again—the victory of President Lula in the face of the far-right threat is a sign of encouragement and hope. Now, the Global South and BRICS have the commitment to back Brazil in this new period, which will be under threat from day one.
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As I was finishing this article, information began circulating—later corroborated by his allies—that Flávio Bolsonaro had fled the country. There were already rumours that he would do so, given that several legal proceedings involving him were underway in court.
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