Democratic Resistance in the Brazilian Elections
In one of the most dramatic elections in the history of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has achieved a dramatic victory against the far-right incumbent Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is now under house arrest following a conviction to more than twenty-seven years for a coup attempt in January 2023. Less than two days after the election results were announced, Flávio left the country to seek asylum in the United States, in defiance of a court order suspending his passport and prohibiting him from leaving the country. The restraining order was issued in the context of an investigation into allegations of corruption and money laundering involving Flávio. In this article, however, we will concentrate on the main events of the electoral process and on how democratic resistance has been organized through street demonstrations and coordinated responses on social media. The elections attracted the world’s attention both for the president’s impressive overturn of a significant electoral loss in the first round and for the extraordinary capacity of mobilization and reorganization of civil society resistance against the extreme right in a very short period of time.
First-Round Results and Electoral Losses in Congress
The results of the first round of the presidential elections favoured Flávio Bolsonaro and his party – the so-called “Liberal Party” (Partido Liberal). Flávio Bolsonaro had few concrete proposals for ruling the country. They included the promise of cutting social benefits and implementing what he called a Big Scissors Treatment (Tesouraço) for dealing with public debt in the style of Javier Milei’s “chainsaw program” in Argentina. Most of his supporters were moved, however, by the electoral promises of granting full amnesty to his father and hundreds of military officials, politicians, and ordinary persons formally convicted for the coup attempt of January 2023, and by the commitment to impeach Justices in the Federal Supreme Court. The main target was Justice Alexandre de Moraes, the rapporteur of the trial for Jair Bolsonaro’s coup attempt. Moraes now faces, in fact, serious suspicions of receiving money under contracts of his wife’s law firm with a now-imprisoned former banker. Although these are separate cases, they raise serious legitimacy concerns towards the Federal Supreme Court and its justices.
In the first round of the election, Flavio Bolsonaro’s strategy produced effective electoral outputs, leading to a victory against Lula by a margin of 2% (47.03% against 45.16% of the valid votes), and to major wins in the Federal Senate and in the House of Representatives. The largest electoral victory was in the Senate, where the far-right parties altogether achieved a supermajority of 49 out of 81 Senators. Bolsonaro’s party, for instance, went from the current total of 15 Senators to 28 Senators in the next legislature, whereas Lula’s Workers’ Party remained with the current number of 9.
Extreme Speeches and Behavioral Impact
The electoral campaign was marked by acts of political violence. According to Terra de Direitos and Justiça Global, 134 incidents were documented during the 50-day campaign preceding the first round, including 64 threats, 33 cases of verbal abuse, 19 physical assaults, 11 attempted attacks, and two killings. In the second round, things got worse. Marcelo de Oliveira Rocha, a 30-year-old environmental engineer and master’s student, died after being assaulted following an event associated with a pro-Lula gathering in Santos, São Paulo. Elisabete Martins Chaves, aged 54, died after being struck by a car while waiting for a pro-Lula campaign caravan in Vargem Alegre, Minas Gerais. Witnesses alleged that the driver supported Flávio Bolsonaro. In Campo Novo do Parecis, Mato Grosso, police investigator Emilson Ormond Souza, aged 56, was shot dead in a bar after a man reportedly asked patrons about their political preferences. According to initial witness accounts, the suspect asked who supported the Workers’ Party (PT) before opening fire. In General Carneiro, Mato Grosso, city councillor Marcos Aurélio Bento Pena was arrested on suspicion of firing shots toward a group celebrating Lula’s electoral victory, leaving two women injured. Other reported incidents of political violence during Brazil’s 2026 elections included a shooting at a pro-Lula demonstration outside the Federal University of Sergipe (UFS), in São Cristóvão, on October 8. In Minas Gerais, on October 24, city councillor Iara Pimentel (PT) was injured when objects, including stones and bottles, were thrown at a sound truck during a pro-Lula campaign caravan in the city of Montes Claros.
External Interference and Imbalance in Social Media
Reporting on the Trump administration’s involvement in Brazilian politics points to efforts to strengthen U.S. influence by supporting the Bolsonaro family’s return to power. During Lula’s 2023–2026 presidential term, Eduardo Bolsonaro relocated to the United States in March 2025 and lobbied U.S. officials to take punitive measures against Brazilian authorities. His efforts formed part of a broader pressure campaign that included Global Magnitsky sanctions against Federal Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, the revocation of visas held by other justices and Brazilian officials, and additional tariffs on Brazilian goods. These measures sought to pressure Brazilian institutions over the prosecution of former president Jair Bolsonaro for plotting a coup. Ahead of the 2026 elections, Rockbridge Network, a U.S. conservative network co-founded by J.D. Vance, also took steps to establish a presence in Brazil. Allegations that individuals associated with the network were supporting Flávio Bolsonaro’s presidential campaign prompted a request to the Federal Supreme Court for an investigation into possible foreign campaign financing.
Another feature of the presidential election was the accusation of a lack of balance between political forces in social networks. Meta faced mounting allegations of unequal treatment of political candidates and of potentially interfering with the electoral process through the management of its social media platforms’ algorithms. Reports indicated that content associated with Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his campaign had experienced restrictions, reduced visibility, or technical obstacles, while content associated with his opponent, Flávio Bolsonaro, was allegedly more readily recommended or amplified. These allegations gained further significance when reports based on internal company communications suggested that Meta employees had acknowledged problems affecting Lula’s accounts. The controversy prompted Lula’s campaign to seek intervention from Brazil’s electoral authorities and to announce a complaint to the Organization of American States.
Legislative Measures, Street Protests, and the “Janones Effect”
Nonetheless, neither the episodes of street violence by supporters of Bolsonaro nor the external interference from the so-called “Big Techs” proved to be decisive in the presidential run. To begin, the Federal Government reacted by approving measures backed by broad public support.
In September 2026, just a few days before the first round, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva issued a provisional measure banning fixed-odds betting in Brazil, including online sports betting and casino games. The government justified the measure on public-health and socioeconomic grounds, citing gambling addiction, household indebtedness, and the diversion of family income to betting platforms. By the same token, on September 17, 2026, the president announced a 15.04% adjustment to Bolsa Família, Brazil’s flagship cash-transfer program, with payments at the new rate beginning in October. The government described the measure as an inflation adjustment intended to preserve beneficiaries’ purchasing power. Announced just 17 days before the first round of the presidential election, the increase sparked political controversy, with critics questioning its timing and challenging its legality under electoral rules.
Though these measures were not sufficient to secure a win in the first round, they contributed to raising the approval of the government in ordinary family households. And the package of good news became more generous in the second round. After the first round, Lula was finally able to deliver one of his most important promises, which he pursued during the bulk of his term but failed to gather sufficient support in Congress. Shortly after the first-round election results were announced, the Federal Senate finally approved a constitutional amendment to reduce the working week from six to five days, with a maximum of 40 working hours per week.
Nonetheless, these popular measures were not enough to overturn the unfortunate electoral results. The turning point was reached, instead, through two decisive factors: first, the engagement of ordinary citizens in public rallies and demonstrations, and second, an unprecedented effort of coordinated action in social networks.
During the final two weeks of the presidential runoff, Lula’s supporters organized a nationwide wave of demonstrations aimed at reversing his first-round deficit and mobilizing voters for the October 25 election. On October 19, Lula claimed in a television interview that nearly 1,700 marches and motorcades had taken place across the country during the preceding weekend. His campaign also reported organizing events in approximately 500 cities on October 18. On the last Saturday before the election, October 24, Lula organized what his campaign described as the largest political rally in Brazil since the “Diretas Já” campaign during the country’s transition to democracy, filling a 2.8-kilometre stretch of Avenida Paulista, São Paulo’s main thoroughfare.
The second and arguably most decisive movement was orchestrated by Congressman André Janones, who led a huge campaign on social media in support of Lula. After Lula’s defeat in the first round, Janones received the mission of giving a response to the far-right dominance of social networks in Brazil. He devised a strategy to turn Meta’s algorithm in favour of Lula and dominate Instagram, Threads, and Facebook. Janones went viral in a WhatsApp channel called “Lula’s Army” (Exército do Lula) during the three weeks of the second round. Created as an independent initiative in the aftermath of Lula’s first-round setback, the channel grew at extraordinary speed, reaching approximately 10.8 million followers by election day. Its success reflected not merely an enormous audience, but its capacity to transform passive support into coordinated political engagement. Janones regularly assigned followers specific tasks, such as sharing campaign videos, promoting hashtags, boosting posts on social media and recruiting new participants through their personal networks. Ready-made messages and clear instructions made participation accessible to millions of supporters, turning the channel into a decentralised mobilisation network capable of amplifying Lula’s campaign across multiple platforms.
The initiative helped restore the morale of a political camp that had entered the runoff facing the prospect of defeat. Janones’s own popularity rose dramatically during this period. His personal commitment became particularly evident when he was hospitalised with a cardiac arrhythmia in the early hours of 19 October, following the televised presidential debate. Even while in hospital, he resumed issuing instructions to his followers and coordinating online mobilisation. Upon his discharge the following day, he immediately rejoined the campaign effort, meeting supporters outside the hospital and declaring himself ready to return to work. The channel’s rapid expansion, the increased visibility of its founder and the mobilisation of millions of supporters demonstrate how digital activism can become a powerful instrument of political coordination and collective confidence.
Indirect Disenfranchisement, Judicial Responses, and Post-Election Responses
Until the 2026 elections, no candidate who lost the election in the first round had been able to overturn their disadvantage in the second round. Nonetheless, Lula was able to achieve a remarkable victory when the polls were open. In all regions of Brazil, Lula da Silva was able to improve by a large margin the votes that he received in the first round. Overall, he improved by more than 10 million the number of votes that he received in the first round, becoming the best-voted President in Brazilian history, with more than 64 M votes (reaching 51,79% of the valid votes), in contrast to more than 59 M votes (48,21% of the valid votes) of his opponent. Lula improved his results by a wide margin, in all territories, even where his opponent won.
This ascending trend had been captured by the polls and led to the repetition of a strategy of disenfranchisement that had been adopted in the second round of the presidential election of 2022, when roadblocks were set up by the Federal Highway Police (Polícia Rodoviária Federal, PRF) to prevent voters from reaching the ballot boxes in states where Lula traditionally wins. In December 2025, Brazil’s Federal Supreme Court (STF) convicted Silvinei Vasques, former head of the Federal Highway Police (PRF), and Marília Alencar, a former intelligence director at the Ministry of Justice, as part of the group that operationalized the attempted coup following the 2022 election. Anderson Torres, Bolsonaro’s former Minister of Justice, was separately convicted in the broader coup proceedings. The court considered the alleged PRF operations to obstruct voters in Lula-supporting areas of the Northeast as part of the wider plot against the democratic order, rather than as a separate voter-suppression offence.
A similar strategy was adopted, again, in the 2026 elections, at least in two major capitals: the city of Salvador, in Bahia, with a large black majority who support Lula, and in the capital city of the State of São Paulo (Brazil’s largest city, with a metropolitan area of 20 million inhabitants). In both cities, the city council reduced the number of buses circulating and taking voters to voting sites. In the city of Salvador, a court order determined the arrest of the Secretary of Urban Mobility, and the full re-establishment of the bus routes. A few hours later, another court order was issued by Justice Cristiano Zanin, from the Federal Supreme Court, to keep the ballots open for two hours after the voting time. The court was motivated by requests from both candidates. On the side of Flavio Bolsonaro, they asked for a term extension due to the heavy rains in the southern states, whereas on the side of Lula da Silva, the request was due to the failures in the transport systems in these two major cities.
The impact of the extra voting hours, however, has been insignificant. While Lula won by a margin of 4,430,191 votes (3.6% of the valid votes), fewer than 35,000 people voted in the extra time. Nonetheless, Flavio Bolsonaro refused to acknowledge the result of the election and claimed that the extension of the voting hours was grounds for annulling the whole electoral process. This allegation was widely regarded as not only desperate but disingenuous, since his own campaign requested it and it is widely documented that it could not possibly have any sort of interference in the result. The grounds were so weak that even the president of his party rejected it, and he gave up on this argument in less than twenty-four hours.
On the day after the elections, all Brazilian media outlets announced that Justice Alexandre de Moraes notified Flávio Bolsonaro to surrender his passport due to pending inquiries in corruption cases. As this article is being finished, it is widely reported that Flávio Bolsonaro has fled the country towards the United States.
A Less Authoritarian Brazil?
Brazil’s history of slavery, racism, patronage politics, extreme inequality, elite rent-seeking, and dictatorship has often made the country emblematic of authoritarian persistence. The 1988 Constitution, however, may have altered this trajectory. Although Jair Bolsonaro won the presidency in 2018, a majority of Brazilian voters appears unwilling to endorse the consolidation of an illiberal political project.
Regardless of Flávio Bolsonaro’s fate, Lula da Silva has achieved a major electoral win. For the fourth time, he has been elected President of Brazil, and he had the highest number of votes any president has received in a presidential election. While the fear of a new Bolsonaro presidency may have motivated such a very high electoral turnout, the election is representative of a historical effort of the progressive camps, both with left-wing and right-wing orientation, toward the preservation of constitutional democracy and the rule of law.