Lula was beatable. A family succession plan was no substitute for a broader governing coalition.
The persistence of socialism in Latin America may not be shocking, but Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s win in Brazil’s presidential elections yesterday was historic.
In Lula’s unprecedented fourth victory, he beat Flávio Bolsonaro 51.79 percent to 48.21 percent. Bolsonaro, a senator from Rio de Janeiro and son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, has refused to concede. He says he will seek annulment of the results over a decision by Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin, a Lula devotee, to extend voting by two hours.
Election irregularities deserve to be investigated. But Brazil’s right should also be asking why it lost a race that signs suggested could go either way, rather than treating defeat as something that cannot legitimately happen. There’s a difference between defending principles and defending one family’s claim to power.
Lula was hardly guaranteed his victory. In September’s Datafolha survey, 42 percent rated his government bad or terrible, against 32 percent who considered it good or excellent. His standing improved before the runoff, but fiscal pressures remained: public debt had reached 82.9 percent of GDP, and the benchmark interest rate stood at 13.75 percent. Flávio led the first round of presidential elections this year by 1.87 percentage points; the final Datafolha and Quaest polls each gave him a 51–49 advantage, within their margins of error. This was by all means a competitive election against a vulnerable incumbent.
Would a different right-wing candidate have defeated Lula? That’s impossible to know. But the selection of this right-wing candidate lent itself more to a succession project than a genuine attempt at political efficacy.
In December 2025, with Jair barred from running while on house arrest for an attempted 2022 coup, Flávio announced his father’s endorsement. Liberal Party leaders accepted the choice. The calculation was not wholly unreasonable: an established senator could inherit his father’s base while offering a more moderate image, tax cuts, and privatization within the Brazilian market.
But there was another option. São Paulo governor Tarcísio de Freitas, Jair’s former infrastructure minister, appealed to investors and centrist party leaders seeking executive experience and a broader coalition. A poll released that December showed Tarcísio trailing Lula by five points in a hypothetical runoff, compared with Flávio’s 15-point deficit. Tarcísio nevertheless maintained that he would seek reelection as governor and endorsed Flávio, affirming his loyalty to the family.
That loyalty had consequences. Jair trusted his sons and wanted to keep his political inheritance within the family. Flávio had argued that anyone receiving his father’s endorsement must be prepared to fight for his pardon. Altruistic concern for the Brazilian nation, truly.
Flávio’s response to defeat makes that distinction more urgent. His campaign had itself requested a voting extension in parts of the country for inclement weather. The eventual decision for a nationwide extension from the Lula-packed court caused genuine confusion, but confusion is not proof that the result should be discarded. Conservatives need not regard Brazil’s electoral institutions as infallible to demand evidence before overturning an election.
If every defeat becomes an indictment of the electoral system, though, the movement never has to examine its own leadership. The machinery is always broken, and the ruling family is never wrong.
Accepting a loss does not require Brazilians to approve of Lula or overlook possible institutional misconduct. It does, however, require building a credible opposition. Lula will face a conservative Congress; the right retains key opportunities to challenge his government.
Brazilian conservatives have been given their wake-up call: a chosen prince is all the Bolsonaro family intends to offer them.