Lula Secures Fourth Term as Bolsonaro Challenges Extended Voting in Brazil Runoff

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will return to Brazil's presidential palace for a fourth non-consecutive term after defeating Senator Flavio Bolsonaro in a Sunday runoff, a reversal of fortunes that followed a first-round loss three weeks earlier.

Electoral authorities declared Lula the winner with about 98.76 percent of ballots counted. He took more than 51 percent of the vote against Bolsonaro's 48 percent. The 80-year-old leader is the first candidate in nearly four decades to lose a first round and still claim the presidency in the runoff.

The campaign shifted sharply after October 4, when Bolsonaro finished first with 47.03 percent against Lula's 45.16 percent, a gap of 2.2 million votes. Lula then courted Brazilians who had stayed home, focused his pitch on living costs and the future of his social programs, and promised free public transport on weekends. On Sunday evening Bolsonaro led early returns, but Lula moved ahead as northeast results arrived. The northeast has long backed Lula and his Workers' Party; Bolsonaro draws strength from the south, southeast and center-west regions.

The count was overshadowed by a late order to keep polling stations open. Voting was scheduled to end at 5pm Brasilia time, and Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin directed that stations remain open until 7pm. Some stations had already closed and shut down their machines before the order arrived, and Zanin later said those locations would stay shut. Some voters were turned away despite the extension. Lula's campaign said local officials had cut public transport in several cities, while Bolsonaro's team pointed to heavy rain and flooding. In Minas Gerais, the regional electoral court reported that 349 polling locations lost power, though machines ran on backup batteries, according to local media.

Bolsonaro has said he will seek to annul the vote and accused Zanin of judicial malfeasance. "He changes the rules of the game mid-game," Bolsonaro said, adding that it is impossible to recognise the results of the election. He noted that Zanin served as Lula's personal lawyer before Lula appointed him to the Supreme Court in 2023. Brazil's Federal Police are investigating alleged transport disruptions in five states, and a court in Salvador ordered the arrest of the city's transport secretary over claims he directed bus service cuts. Donald Trump Jr criticised the voting extension on social media.

Andrei Roman, head of polling firm AtlasIntel, pointed to a drop in abstention as one factor in Lula's win. An estimated 33.4 million Brazilians, about 21 percent of the electorate, did not vote in the first round, the highest abstention rate in a general election since 1998.

In his victory speech, Lula said he had to "overcome interference coming from the outside." He called the result a defeat for denialism and for lies. Reuters reported on Saturday that State Department officials had pushed for sanctions against Brazil to weaken Lula. Asked on Sunday whom he wanted to win, Donald Trump said: "I don't want to get into that, but we are watching." The Federal Police investigation into transport disruptions in five states remains open.