Conservative Sen. Flavio Bolsonaro and incumbent socialist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva responded to Sunday’s first-round presidential election — which resulted in a surprise victory for Bolsonaro ahead of the October 25 runoff.
Brazil held its 2026 general elections on Sunday, a large-scale electoral event that saw a nearly 79 percent turnout by the nation’s over 158.7 million voters. The first round of the presidential election saw Bolsonaro defy all polls and win in the first round with 47.03 percent of the votes against Lula’s 45.16 percent. As neither candidate obtained the 50 percent majority of the votes cast to win in the first round, a runoff election between Bolsonaro and Lula will take place on Sunday, October 25.
Bolsonaro, son of former President Jair Bolsonaro and now the presidential frontrunner for the Liberal Party (PL), spoke to reporters after the results came in. The conservative senator declared that Sunday’s election marked “the end of the era” of Lula’s ruling far-left Workers’ Party and announced that he will work in concert with elected PL representatives towards securing a victory in the upcoming runoff.
“I was very happy to see how many Brazilians went to the polls to make their voices heard, they didn’t stay on the sidelines. It’s the end of the PT era; change in the country is now a reality,” Bolsonaro said, per Jovem Pan.
“I am very happy with the result — nearly 56 million Brazilians have given me this vote of confidence for change. The key word is change,” he added.
The conservative candidate reportedly affirmed that internal polling handled by the PL party suggested there was a chance that Bolsonaro could have been elected outright in the first round — contrary to what multiple polls suggested over the past weeks, including polls released hours before the election itself. As Sen. Bolsonaro reportedly stated, he did in fact appear to have passed the 50 percent vote threshold during preliminary results, but his lead saw itself reduced as votes from Lula’s leftist strongholds were tallied by the nation’s electoral authorities.
On Monday, the conservative senator published a social media post thanking God and Brazil for the results. Bolsonaro stated that Brazil spoke at the ballot boxes “for change and for the future,” not just in the presidency but also in the Senate and Chamber of Deputies, where the PL party obtained outstanding results.
“The overwhelming majority we achieved in Congress will bring back the legal security that the country so desperately needs to grow. The federal Legislature is set up for a president like Flávio Bolsonaro,” he wrote.
“Congratulations also to the elected governors and state deputies. I make the commitment to always put the people above any partisan issue, because, for example, the effective fight against narcoterrorism has to be done together with Governors and Mayors,” he continued, and concluded, “Just a few days left until we rescue Brazil! Let’s go all out with everything!”
President Lula spoke to his followers alongside Vice President Geraldo Alckmin and affirmed that he was “convinced” he was going to win in the first round — but that nevertheless he is “good at knockout matches.”
Per Jovem Pan, Lula also announced that he will take Monday off but warned Bolsonaro supporters that, on Tuesday, his presidential campaign will “begin from scratch” as it will now be a campaign between “just two candidates.” Lula claimed, “We’ll be able to highlight the differences between the proposals on the table for Brazil.”
“On the other side, we have nothing but uncertainty and a sinister past,” he added. “There is no track record for the father or the son. They thrive on sinister and extremely serious alliances.”
Lula published an official electoral propaganda video snippet of his statements on Sunday and accompanied it with a message that reads, “I’m really good at the knockout stage. In the one-on-one. The Bolsonaristas better get ready, because we’re going to defeat them.”
Brazilian outlets — including left-leaning newspapers such as Folha de São Paulo — pointed out that Sunday marked Lula’s worst first-round electoral performance since 1998. At the time, UOL recounted, the then-incumbent president obtained 31.7 percent of the votes against former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who won in the first round with 53 percent of the votes.
Unnamed sources in Lula’s campaign reportedly affirmed to the outlet Metrópoles that they consider Sunday’s results a “blow” and that the group is “hanging in there.” The sources claimed to the outlet that Lula is “doing well” despite the results and is “drawing on the experience he has gained in other elections” to face the runoff.
Per CNN Brasil, Lula received 3.4 million fewer votes on Sunday than the number he obtained in the 2022 first round and saw losses in key electoral states such as Minas Gerais — a state that “has always given its majority of votes to all elected presidents since 1989.”
At press time, Lula, 80, has run for president on seven different occasions, having lost in 1989, 1994, and 1998. He was finally elected president in 2002 and was re-elected in 2006. He attempted to run for office in 2018 but was convicted of misappropriating government funds while president following his second term and was subsequently banned from running for office.
The conviction, however, was controversially overturned, which allowed him to run for a third time in 2022, narrowly defeating then-incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro, Sen. Bolsonaro’s father. President Lula is presently running to be reelected for a fourth term.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.