Flávio Bolsonaro set to win Brazilian presidency after shock first round victory | Flavio Bolsonaro

Flávio Bolsonaro is in pole position to win Brazil’s presidential election, after a far-right tsunami propelled him to a shock first-round victory over incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, leaving progressive voters reeling.

The 45-year-old right-wing candidate received 56.1 million votes to Lula’s 53.8 million – 47.03% to 45.16% – meaning the 80-year-old left-winger has a mountain to climb if he wants to bounce back in the run-off on October 25. Never since the return of democracy to Brazil in 1985 has the finalist of the first round managed to reverse the situation and win the second round.

“Miracles are possible in politics. But I don’t think it will happen,” political scientist Miguel Lago said of Lula’s chances of turning back the clock. “I don’t see Flávio losing these elections now.»

The rise of the far right has been a triumph – albeit incomplete – for the Bolsonaro clan and its 71-year-old patriarch, Jair Bolsonaro.

The disgraced ex-president, who is serving a 27-year prison sentence for plotting a coup after losing the 2022 elections to Lula, saw four of his close associates elected to congress. His wife, Michelle Bolsonaro, 44, won a Senate seat, as did his second son, Carlos Bolsonaro, 43. Bolsonaro’s youngest son, Jair Renan Bolsonaro, 28, and the ex-president’s brother, Renato Bolsonaro, 62, both won seats in the lower house of congress.

In Latin America’s largest democracy, key congressional and gubernatorial elections were also won by loyalists Bolsonaristas including Tarcísio de Freitas, re-elected governor of the state of São Paulo, and Sérgio Moro, elected governor of the southern state of Paraná. Both men were ministers under the Bolsonaro government from 2018 to 2022.

Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party (PL) now has the largest caucus in the Senate with 28 of its 81 seats. If we add the seats of other far-right parties, this number rises to 43, giving the movement a majority in the upper house.

Meanwhile, pro-Lula Senate candidates, including former Environment Minister Marina Silva, left-wing veteran Benedita da Silva and centrist former Planning Minister Simone Tebet, suffered bitter defeats.

Nikolas Ferreira and Lucas Pavanato, two young people Bolsonarist social media warriors, became the most voted members of Congress in Brazilian history, receiving more than 3 million votes.

“We are experiencing a revolution… The far right is growing very steadily, election after election,” Lago said, calling this the worst election for progressive and moderate centrist parties since the late 1980s.

Lago believed Lula had succeeded in halting the advance of Bolsonaro’s populist movement in 2022, thanks to voters’ positive memories of his first two terms, from 2002 to 2010. At the time, a global commodities boom allowed Brazil’s first working-class president to finance major social welfare programs that helped lift millions out of poverty. “But it was just an interregnum,” Lago said.

Control of the Senate should allow pro-Bolsonaro politicians to approve an amnesty for their movement’s charismatic leader, allowing the former president to walk out of the Brasilia mansion where he lives under house arrest and reassert his leadership of the far right.

“I think he will be released and I think he will be very important during the (presidency) of Flávio Bolsonaro,” Lago said. “Flávio will lead the country and (Jair) Bolsonaro will do what he has always done: lead the revolution.”

The senatorial majority could also help Bolsonaro’s third son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, return from self-imposed exile in the United States. The 42-year-old, who has close ties to Donald Trump’s Maga movement, was sentenced in absentia to four years in prison earlier this year for coercion – the result of his pressuring the Trump administration to interfere in his father’s coup trial. Eduardo Bolsonaro hopes to become foreign minister if his brother wins the presidency.

Trump, who has been accused of trying to tip the election in Bolsonaro’s favor, has yet to comment on Sunday’s result, although he praised on his Truth Social network the speed of the vote count. But the US president will be delighted by the right’s strong presence, a major boost in his bid to extend the conservative “orange wave” sweeping Latin America to its largest democracy and economy. In recent years, a succession of pro-Trump presidents have taken power across the region, from Costa Rica to Honduras, El Salvador, Chile and Colombia.

One of Trump’s most enthusiastic regional supporters, Argentine President Javier Milei, celebrated Bolsonaro’s “historic” victory against “the communist Lula.” “The American continent belongs to citizens who want to live freely,” Milei wrote on X.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wished Bolsonaro “good luck in the final” and celebrated his “big victory.” He wrote on X: “I look forward to restoring the extraordinary friendship between Israel and Brazil. »

Speaking after Sunday’s results were confirmed, Lula showed courage in what analysts called a catastrophic evening for the left. “From tomorrow we will launch a new campaign: (and in) a campaign with only two candidates we will be able to show the difference between our proposals for Brazil,” he said, promising to expose his rival’s “dark past,” which involves well-documented ties to members of Rio’s underworld and allegations of corruption, which Bolsonaro has denied.

But the atmosphere at Lula’s post-election event would have been funereal and Bolsonaro presents himself as the big favorite in the second round. He will likely be buoyed by the migration of votes from other right-wing candidates – Ronaldo Caiado, Renan Santos and Romeu Zema – who between them won more than 5.5 million votes.

Santos quickly announced that he would not support either candidate, considering Lula and Bolsonaro to be “crooks.” Zema has pledged to vote against Lula’s Workers’ Party (PT) in the second round, while Caiado has yet to declare his intentions.

Lula’s best hope may be to convince some of the 33 million Brazilians who didn’t vote to participate next time. “He will have to mobilize these apathetic voters who, in a sense, have already abandoned politics, which will be an extremely difficult task,” said Camila Rocha, a political scientist who studies Brazil’s new right.

Rocha has spent recent months interviewing undecided voters and identified “significant voter apathy, particularly among those not aligned with Bolsonarismand who could potentially vote for Lula.”

Although Flávio Bolsonaro has held political office for more than 20 years, “for undecided voters, his main positive characteristic is this idea of ​​’renewal,’ despite his possible involvement in corruption and with paramilitary groups,” Rocha added.

Lago believed that only a radical departure from Lula’s campaign – such as a change of candidate or a serious scandal involving Bolsonaro – could change the outcome of the election. But he doubted that would happen.