Lula pulls off Brazil's first runoff comeback to win a fourth term

Brazil's Superior Electoral Court declared Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva mathematically elected on Sunday night, giving the incumbent a fourth term as president after a runoff count that reversed the first-round result.

In the court's update stamped 9:24 p.m. local time in Brasília, with 99.86 per cent of polling sections tallied, Lula held 64,137,770 votes, or 51.76 per cent of valid votes, against 59,769,627 votes, or 48.24 per cent, for Senator Flávio Bolsonaro — a margin of more than 4.3 million votes, according to the court's results dashboard as reported by JBizNews.

The result overturns the October 4 first round, when Bolsonaro finished ahead with 47.03 per cent of valid votes against Lula's 45.16 per cent. Since Brazil's two-round presidential system began in 1989, no first-round runner-up had previously gone on to win a runoff, according to Anadolu Agency as carried by Kazinform.

The count swung through the evening. Bolsonaro led early as votes from the south, which leans right, were reported first, before Lula moved ahead as ballots from the Northeast, his stronghold, came in, GuyanaUpdate reported. Lula carried all nine Northeastern states, including Bahia and Pernambuco, where he took about 70 per cent of the vote.

The victory makes Lula the first person elected president of Brazil four times, after his wins in 2002, 2006 and 2022. His new term begins January 5, 2027, Anadolu Agency reported.

Markets reacted fast. The iShares MSCI Brazil ETF fell more than 17 per cent in overnight trading, TheStreet Pro reported, as traders who had positioned for a Bolsonaro win unwound bets. Lula has promised a fiscal adjustment without saying how he will deliver it, and he will face a more hostile Congress after conservative parties made sweeping gains in this month's congressional elections, according to the Financial Times as carried by TheStreet Pro.

For Canada, the result lands through portfolios and prices. Brazil is Latin America's largest economy and a major commodities exporter, so its politics move global food, energy and raw-material prices that feed into Canadian inflation, grocery bills and gasoline costs — and Canadian investors with emerging-market exposure felt the overnight slide directly through Brazil-linked funds.

What happens next is the formal completion of the count, a response from Bolsonaro, and the transition to Lula's January term — with the first test being whether his government can present a fiscal plan that calms the markets that sold off on the result. The figures remain preliminary until the count completes, and Bolsonaro's response had not been reported at the time of writing.