Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva clinched Brazil's top job Sunday after besting incumbent Jair Bolsonaro with 50.90% of the vote, figures released by the country's election authority confirmed.
With 99.96% of the ballots counted, Bolsonaro gained 49.10%. The ouster marks the end of a politically heightened period for Brazil as Bolsonaro gained widespread attention for his accelerated destruction of the Amazon rainforest and the government's failure to effectively implement preventative COVID-19 measures such as masking practices. Brazil documented nearly 700,000 covid-related deaths.
Earlier, a congressional inquiry recommended Bolsonaro be charged with nine offenses, including charlatanism and crimes against humanity, for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is unclear if those charges will be handed down once Bolsonaro passes the presidency to da Silva.
The elected president had more than 60.2 million votes, a record in the history of Brazilian democracy. He will begin his third presidential term on January 1st, 2023. Da Silva previously served as president from 2003 to 2010.
Da Silva responded to the winning results by sharing an image of his hand over the Brazilian flag, captioned "democracy."
In a victory speech, da Silva acknowledged that the challenges ahead would be "immense" but that efforts to rebuild the country would be "necessary ... in all its dimensions."
"The majority of the Brazilian people made it very clear that they want more - not less - democracy," he told supporters. "This is the victory of an immense democratic movement that was formed, above political parties, personal interests and ideologies, so that democracy would win."
The Sunday results mark the latest South American country to oust a conservative leader in favor of electing a leftist president on the continent. Earlier, similar moves were made by Colombia, Chile and Honduras.
Mainstream polling firms all had Lula pegged for a 4-7 point win over Bolsonaro, but the race remained painfully close over the course of the evening, with Brazilian media unofficially calling the election in favor of da Silva just before 7 p.m. EST, with less than 99% of the votes accounted for.
Reports indicate that US President Joe Biden plans to send US national security adviser Jake Sullivan to Brazil in the coming days to reinforce US support for a peaceful transition. It is yet unclear if da Silva plans to accept support from the US government.
Shortly after the election was called, Biden issued his congratulations for da Silva, noting in a White House-released statement that he "looks forward to working together to continue the cooperation between our two countries in the months and years ahead." The American leader added that he believed the election process to have been "free, fair and credible."
After the polls closed at 4 p.m. EST, results poured in relatively quickly – mostly due to the fact that Brazil is the only country in the world that uses a fully electronic voting system.
As Bolsonaro’s support has been stronger in wealthier areas of Brazil, where the more-developed infrastructure allows for faster internet connections than poorer regions - where leftists are favored, early results skewed in Bolsonaro’s favor. However, as the night wore on, da Silva’s edge creeped forward, eventually overtaking Bolsonaro just before 6 p.m. EST.
During the first round of voting on Oct. 2, da Silva took nearly 6 million more votes than Bolsonaro, who performed better than predicted but it wasn’t enough to secure the 50% of the vote required to avoid the runoff election.
Ahead of the Sunday vote, a Datafolha institute poll showed that 49% of Brazilians were in favor of da Silva, whereas 44% of respondents supported the reelection of Bolsonaro.
Da Silva had an 80% approval rating when he previously left office in 2010; however, during the recession that succeeded his presidency, he was arrested after being charged with accepting a condo and home improvements from companies vying for government contracts.
Da Silva spent almost 18 months in jail before his convictions were nullified by the Supreme Court. The high court ultimately determined that the judge ruling his case was biased – allowing da Silva to run again for the presidency.
Troubles Ahead of Final Tally
According to several reports circulating on social media, federal highway agents were stopping vehicles and questioning occupants in several states across Brazil in an effort to suppress voter turnout for Sunday’s election. These stops violated orders made by election officials on Saturday to halt any traffic stops that could prevent people from making it to the polls.
The federal highway police has been asked by Alexandre de Moraes, the Supreme Court justice who heads Brazil’s election agency, to provide proof that his officers were not violating election rules to benefit Bolsonaro. According to a federal highway officer with access to internal data, the highway police had stopped over 550 buses across the country by Sunday afternoon – a considerable amount more than those stopped during the first round of voting on Oct. 2, when they stopped nearly 300 buses.
Highway Police Chief Silvinei Vasques was seen in a since-deleted Instagram “story” on Saturday urging people to vote for Bolsonaro, and has previously posted photographs of himself on the app standing next to Bolsonaro. Vasques responded to Morae’s order by refusing to cease Election Day traffic stops, citing the fact that Morae’s order didn’t apply to “all federal highway operations.”
As reported earlier by the New York Times, the traffic stops prevented people like Thomas Thaler, a 45-year-old computer programmer whose wife gave up on voting after the bus she was on was stopped by highway police on its way to Recife. Others were still able to make it to the polls, but had to take alternate routes after being questioned by officers.
In a statement to reporters, Moraes said that the investigation by election officials found that though the stops delayed the buses, they ultimately didn’t didn’t stop them from reaching their intended destinations – the polling stations. “We didn’t have any voters who didn’t vote because of the operations.”