Brazil's tight election tests its ability to say 'no' to Trump

Flávio Bolsonaro runs in place of his father, convicted of coup attempt

Brazilian voters go to the polls Sunday in a presidential election between incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the 80-year-old Workers’ Party leader seeking a fourth non-consecutive term, and opposition senator Flávio Bolsonaro, 45, the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro. Polls show a neck-and-neck race. If neither candidate wins 50% plus one of the votes, a runoff is scheduled for 25 October.

The contest carries weight beyond Brazil’s borders. Shortly after his controversial speech to the United Nations General Assembly in September, US President Donald Trump gathered a dozen like-minded Latin American leaders in New York and boasted that rightwing candidates had won all seven presidential elections held in the region since he began his second term. “Everybody I’ve endorsed has won,” Trump told most of the leaders of the Shield of the Americas, an anti-drug cartel coalition of 15 countries governed by the right or far right.

Those electoral victories — combined with the US takeover of Venezuela after the capture of Nicolás Maduro — have left six Latin American countries under leftwing governments: regional heavyweights Brazil and Mexico, small Uruguay and Guatemala, and the governments of Cuba and Nicaragua.

Pedro Telles, a professor at the School of International Relations at Brazil’s FGV university, said Trump “really does take seriously the idea that the Americas should be his back yard.” Telles added that Mexico will remain relevant under President Claudia Sheinbaum, “one of the most popular leftwing leaders,” but that a Flávio Bolsonaro victory “would be a real blow to the left and a major boost to the far-right agenda globally.”

Sandra Borda Guzmán, an associate professor of political science at Colombia’s Universidad de los Andes, said there is a lot at stake. “Instead of taking the opportunity to expand our region’s autonomy, a far-right victory would align the region unconditionally with the dictates of the US,” she said.

Michael Shifter, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, framed the vote as more than a routine political transition. “Brazil is a big prize,” Shifter said, adding that amid conflicts in Iran, Ukraine and Israel-Palestine, “US foreign policy is going very badly in the rest of the world.” A Flávio Bolsonaro victory, he said, would be used “triumphantly” by Trump to showcase an “almost completely aligned region.”

The elder Bolsonaro cannot run himself; he is under house arrest after being convicted of attempting a coup to overturn his 2022 election loss to Lula. “So it’s not just a question of one more country moving to the right, but of a right that has a very problematic relationship with democracy,” Shifter said.

Flávio Bolsonaro’s only previous executive bid ended in a fourth-place finish in Rio de Janeiro’s 2016 mayoral race. Analysts cite several reasons the senator — best known for his family name and for corruption allegations, some shelved and others still under investigation — has emerged as a serious challenger to a three-time president. Many voters see his candidacy as a vehicle for both his father’s base and an anti-Lula vote.

Bruna Arguello, 34, a businesswoman from Santana de Parnaíba, said she would vote for Flávio “not because I think he’s the best option” but because her preferred candidate, Ronaldo Caiado, a former governor of Goiás, is polling at 4%. “Unfortunately, he has no chance of winning, so I’m going with Flávio so we can get Lula out,” she said.

Actor Docy Moreira, 59, of Belo Horizonte, said she would vote for Lula. In 2018, she was so dismayed by Jair Bolsonaro’s election that she decided to leave her home town, where two-thirds of voters had backed him. “I couldn’t understand how people, including the vast majority of my family, were choosing so much violence and authoritarianism,” she said. She Googled which cities had given Bolsonaro the lowest share of the vote, chose one about 1,550 miles away and moved north to Luís Correia, in Piauí. She eventually returned home, and most of her family will now vote for Flávio Bolsonaro. Still, Moreira remains confident Lula will win. “If not, it will be devastating, but I’m not going to move again. I’m stronger now. I’ve learned that I can find refuge within myself,” she said.

The candidates differ sharply on the United States. Lula has raised concerns about Brazilian sovereignty and called it “sad to see the inferiority complex of Latin American presidents” in the Trump-created coalition. Flávio Bolsonaro has pledged to join the Shield of the Americas and to follow an “iron fist” approach to crime.

The candidates also diverge on what has become the Trump administration’s main regional policy: the so-called “war on drugs” used to justify dozens of airstrikes on boats that have killed more than 230 people, and joint operations involving US military personnel on land. At the latest Shield of the Americas meeting, Trump also referred to the “tremendous natural wealth” of Latin American countries, which he said could not “be taken over by hostile outside powers” — widely understood as a reference to China.

Privileged access to Brazil’s rare earths and critical minerals was one of the conditions Washington imposed in exchange for not applying tariffs, which Lula rejected. Flávio Bolsonaro, by contrast, has offered those natural resources as the “solution” to help the US “break its dependence on China.”

The Lula-Trump relationship has swung between not speaking and public displays of warmth, but is currently at a low point, with the Brazilian president and Democratic members of the US Congress accusing Washington of trying to interfere in Flávio Bolsonaro’s favor.

On domestic policy, unemployment, poverty and inflation have fallen during Lula’s current term and average incomes have risen, but so has household debt — a trend many attribute to online betting, which the elder Bolsonaro left unregulated and which Lula banned days before the vote. Lula’s campaign has also been hit by corruption allegations — still under investigation — involving his son and a former aide, while a scandal involving supreme court justices with no connection to Lula may have affected the president’s standing.

As in recent elections across Latin America, the race includes other candidates but is polarised between the two leading contenders. Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro have alternated as frontrunners in the final stretch, leaving the outcome unpredictable heading into Sunday.