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What next for US relations?
Researcher on Middle Eastern affairs
While US President Donald Trump claimed Brazil’s second round presidential election looked ‘rigged’ on October 26, other heads of state rushed to recognize President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s unexpected second-round presidential victory over conservative Flávio Bolsonaro.
French President Emmanuel Macron, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney all publicly congratulated Lula on his victory. Even Brazil’s more conservative neighbours joined the chorus, including Peruvian President Keiko Fujimori, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa, Chilean President José Antonio Kast, and Paraguayan President Santiago Peña.
The White House’s response is not surprising. It had been counting on the election of Bolsonaro to complete its bingo card of right-wing presidents in the Western Hemisphere, following a period of sustained electoral success for right-wing candidates stretching from Honduras to Argentina. But Latin American regional solidarity and respect for democratic institutions and the popular will trumped ideology and alignment with the US.
Adding Latin America’s largest democracy and economy would have represented a major victory for the self-proclaimed ‘Donroe Doctrine’. Instead, public support for Lula’s re-election may demonstrate that the bloc of Trump-aligned and Trump-adjacent presidents may not be as strong and ideological as many thought. (Only Argentine President Javier Milei has withheld congratulations for Lula.)
After initially calling for an annulment, members of the defeated candidate’s team said the party accepted the results but questioned the conditions of the election process. Unlike his father, Jair, did in 2022 when he lost to Lula, Flávio seems to be walking back an outright rejection of the election, while still undermining public confidence in the election results.
Their questions over how the situation unfolded hinges on a Supreme Court justice who supported Lula’s Workers’ Party request to extend voting by two hours on October 25. That request was made originally by both parties to Brazil’s electoral court — in order to accommodate voters who struggled to make it to the booths due to heavy rains, and others allegedly affected by limited public transportation. But the decision to kick the request up to the Supreme Court after the electoral court failed to respond casts a pall over the results — and further threatens the reputation of a Supreme Court already under suspicion for being politicized.
Brazil’s modern, transparent voting system will be able to demonstrate the results — for those who want to believe them. But for core Bolsonaro supporters, trusting the results may be difficult. Flávio’s father also claimed unproven fraud in 2022. And father and son have baked distrust of the judicial and electoral system into their political DNA, polarizing politics and society in Brazil.
In the end, how far Flávio’s team decides to take its claims of fraud may depend on the White House and the US State Department. Both had a lot riding on a Bolsonaro victory. For Trump, it would have been the crowning achievement for his support in the region, during this heavy year of presidential elections across the hemisphere.
For others the issue is more ideological and personal. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, like many Cuban-Americans, saw Lula’s Workers’ Party as complicit in upholding the communist regimes in Cuba and Nicaragua. Creating a ring of conservative, anti-communist governments across the hemisphere to stand with the US against those regimes has long been a dream of Republican administrations and Cuban-Americans in Florida. Their perspective will likely also help decide whether and when the Trump administration accepts a Lula victory.
With conservative majorities in both houses of Congress, Lula will have a difficult time attempting to tackle the economic and fiscal reforms necessary to keep the government solvent and address its looming sovereign debt. But the biggest loser in the election is social trust. The country’s voters are now almost evenly split between Bolsonaro and Lula (only 3.6 per cent separated the two leaders). And popular confidence in the Supreme Court may decline even more.