Lula's Second Act

In a close 30 October 2022 runoff, Brazilian voters ousted far-right president Jair Bolsonaro after a single four-year term, replacing him with Workers' Party (PT) candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who had been president from 2003 to 2011. With nearly every vote counted in under three hours, the final result—Lula over Bolsonaro, 50.9 to 49.1 percent—was certified by Brazil's independent Superior Electoral Court (TSE) and officially announced before 8 p.m. local time. The 77-year-old Lula's winning margin amounted to more than 2.1 million valid votes cast, but Brazil has 216 million people and this was the closest result (by percentage) ever in a Brazilian presidential race. Lula had scored 48.2 percent in the October 2 first round, leaving him short of the 50 percent needed to avoid a runoff. Bolsonaro had secured 43.2 percent in that round, but in the tense weeks following it he had tightened the race.

When Lula prevailed, news coverage across the globe portrayed his victory as a shift to the left by Latin America's largest country, consistent with recent elections across the region from Mexico to the Southern Cone. The presidential outcome, however, is not the only story from Brazil in 2022. These were in fact general elections, and the returns in races for the 27 state governorships and the bicameral National Congress suggest a rather different narrative. Brazil's political right made striking gains in the concurrent contests.

A look at the 2022 elections as a whole reveals macropolitical developments that complicate any idea of Brazil as simply going with a leftward regional flow. Constitutionalism prevailed despite widespread worry about Bolsonaro's authoritarian inclinations. The principles of electoral integrity and military impartiality proved strong enough to effect a democratic alternation in power.

Moreover, excessive focus on the presidential race obscures other core realities of the 2022 general elections: Conservative forces performed extremely well overall. Brazil's party system has undergone far-reaching change. The political center has largely been abandoned, and with its emptying out has come the collapse of what had been something like a two-party system: The rivalry between the PT and the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) structured presidential competition and coalitional politics between 1994 and 2014, but it does so no more. Lastly, a number of conditions that...