Lula beats Flavio Bolsonaro in Brazil's runoff and wins a fourth term, and Bolsonaro refuses to concede

Lula is going back to the presidency for a fourth term, and he got there the hard way. He lost the first round on October 4, when Flavio Bolsonaro took 47.03 percent of the valid vote against his 45.16 percent. In the three weeks between the rounds he added more than 10 million votes, while Bolsonaro added about 3.6 million, and on Sunday he won the runoff with 51.76 percent against 48.2 percent, as of October 25. No candidate who finished second in the first round of a Brazilian presidential election had ever overturned the result since the country returned to democracy in 1985.

He told the crowd on Avenida Paulista in Sao Paulo that voters had turned out in huge numbers because his campaign had persuaded them the vote mattered. "People went to vote because we convinced them it was important to preserve democracy," he said. "This country doesn't accept being anybody's colony." Lula turns 81 on Tuesday. Affordability and Brazil's relationship with the United States ran through the whole campaign, and Lula spent the final weeks calling Bolsonaro Trump's candidate and accusing Washington of wanting to colonize Brazil for its resources.

Bolsonaro refused to accept the count. "There's a lot that needs to be cleared up before Brazil simply accepts this foul play," he told a news conference, and he said he would ask the courts to annul the election. His challenge rests on Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin's decision to extend voting by two hours on Sunday, after heavy rain and transport failures kept voters from polling stations in the south. Both campaigns had asked for an extension before the order came. The electoral court confirmed Lula's victory after the count finished.

The result lands in Washington as a loss. President Trump never gave Bolsonaro a formal endorsement, and on Sunday he said again that he was watching the race and would not say whom he backed. Bolsonaro, a Rio de Janeiro senator and the eldest son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, had campaigned on his closeness to the Trump administration and on renegotiating the 25 percent American tariff on Brazilian goods. His father is serving a 27 year sentence under house arrest after a court convicted him of plotting a coup after he lost the 2022 election, and a Flavio Bolsonaro victory was the family's best route to a pardon.

Lula interrupted a run of right wing victories across Latin America that had given Trump friendly governments in Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras and Peru. He takes office in January facing a Congress his opponents control. Bolsonaro's Liberal Party became the largest party in the Chamber of Deputies in the first round, and four other members of the Bolsonaro family won federal seats this year. Lula will govern Brazil's 214 million people with the legislature in the other camp and with China, Brazil's largest trading partner, expecting the relationship to deepen.