Donald Trump’s ‘Donroe Doctrine’ Faces Setback as Lula Wins in Brazil - Newsweek

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the leftist Workers’ Party won Brazil's presidential runoff on Sunday with 51.8 percent of valid votes to 48.2 percent for Flávio Bolsonaro, according to Brazil's Superior Electoral Court, with 100 percent of ballots counted.

Lula’s victory, once confirmed by electoral authorities, would secure him a fourth nonconsecutive term as president. The 81-year-old's new term begins January 5, 2027.

Bolsonaro, 45, is a close ally of President Donald Trump. Final polls showed a dead heat, while prediction markets favored Bolsonaro. The eldest son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is serving a 27-year prison sentence over an attempted coup following his 2022 election defeat to Lula, finished first in the October 4 first round. Bolsonaro finished with 47.03 percent of valid votes to Lula's 45.16 percent, defying surveys that had shown Lula ahead.

The runoff decided that Latin America's largest country will not join a growing bloc of right-leaning governments aligned with the Trump administration.

Oliver Stuenkel, a professor of international relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo, told Newsweek Sunday via email that Lula’s victory was a major surprise given the expectations heading into the runoff.

Stuenkel said Lula’s campaign underwent a “complete overhaul” after his first-round defeat, which he said rejuvenated the campaign after a period of overconfidence and internal disagreements.

“I think the defeat jolted the campaign and gave more power to a smaller group of people who could articulate a clear message,” Stuenkel said, pointing to a greater role for campaign strategists in shaping Lula’s communications.

He also described an unusually intense grassroots effort among Lula supporters between the two rounds, saying some voters told him they had spent weeks posting online, contacting family members and talking to people in person.

“The whole campaign went into a completely different mode,” Stuenkel said, “and I think that paid off.”

At the same time, Stuenkel said there was “a degree of overconfidence” within Bolsonaro’s campaign, including what he described as a public lack of discipline.

Bolsonaro refused to concede Brazil’s presidential runoff Sunday after Lula defeated him by nearly 4.4 million votes, challenging the result following a chaotic extension of voting hours.

Both Bolsonaro and Lula had requested that polls remain open later amid public transportation problems and inclement weather in parts of the country. The extension was ordered shortly before polls were scheduled to close, and some polling places reportedly received notice only after voting had ended.

Despite having also sought an extension, Bolsonaro criticized the move as unprecedented and called for the election results to be annulled, saying he could not accept the outcome. He pointed out that Zanin is Lula’s former lawyer and criticized him for “changing the rules of the game in the middle of the game.”

“It's impossible to recognize the results of the election in the context of these things that happened,” he said.

Benjamin Gedan, who served as the White House National Security Council director for South America in the Obama administration, told Newsweek he expected false fraud claims from Bolsonaro, whose two political mentors, his father and Trump, are both "paradigmatic election denialists."

President Trump on Monday questioned the results of Brazil’s presidential election, saying without providing evidence that the vote won by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva “looked like another rigged election.”

“Well, it looked terrible to me. I thought it was a terrible look,” Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews. “I didn’t take sides, but it looked like another rigged election, frankly.”

Trump continued: “Elections have to be indisputable. And it looked very bad to me. I didn’t take sides. I didn’t endorse anybody or anything, but I watched the election. It looked so corrupt and so terrible.”

Trump also questioned how the vote was counted and described a two-hour extension of voting ordered by Brazil’s Supreme Court as “very strange."

Lula, meanwhile, thanked Brazilian voters and pledged to govern for the entire country after securing reelection.

“No one is required to like the president-elect, but he must govern for everyone,” Lula told supporters.

He also framed the result as a rejection of his opponent’s politics, declaring: “This was a defeat for denialism and lies.”

Looking ahead to another term in office, Lula pledged an ambitious presidency.

“I want to make a commitment: I will deliver the best term any president has ever served,” he said. “I will dedicate myself 24 hours a day to making this the country that everyone dreams of.”

Voting in Brazil’s presidential runoff was extended Sunday after both campaigns sought additional time because of disruptions in areas where their respective candidates have strong support. Polls had been scheduled to close at 5 p.m. Brasília time, or 4 p.m. ET, but voting at locations that remained open was extended until 7 p.m. Brasília time, or 6 p.m. ET.

Vote counting resumed after polls closed.

Lula’s campaign cited public transportation problems in nine states, including disruptions involving buses used to reach polling places in São Paulo and Salvador. In Salvador, a state electoral judge ordered the arrest of the city’s mobility secretary, Pablo Souza, after at least 75 public buses were prevented from leaving municipal garages. The Organization of American States’ electoral mission said it was monitoring reports of transportation problems.

Bolsonaro’s campaign separately sought an extension because of heavy rainfall in southern Brazil, where he has significant support. The competing requests added another layer of uncertainty to a runoff that preelection polling indicated was closely contested.

The late ruling also created confusion at some polling places. In Brasília, volunteers overseeing the vote count at one school debated whether they were required to remain, while voting machines at a Rio de Janeiro polling station had already been switched off. Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin later clarified that the extension applied wherever polls were still open.

Bolsonaro's runoff lead has steadily narrowed. Datafolha showed him ahead 52 to 48 percent of valid votes on October 8 and 51 to 49 percent on October 15. Its poll released Thursday had the two tied at 50 percent.

Nearly all of those results fall within the polls' margins of error. An average compiled by The Rio Times puts Bolsonaro at 50.9 percent and Lula at 49.1 percent.

"Lula has narrowed the gap, but not enough; the margin is very tight and within a dead heat. It could go either way," Gimena Sánchez, director for the Andes at the Washington Office on Latin America, told Newsweek.

Most major pollsters had Lula ahead going into the October 4 vote. Datafolha, one of Brazil's most closely watched pollsters, put Lula at 45 percent of valid votes and Bolsonaro at 42 percent in its final survey. AtlasIntel/Bloomberg had Lula ahead 47 to 44.1 percent, and CNT/MDA showed him leading 47.8 to 42.1 percent. Quaest came closest, with Lula up 46 to 45 percent.

Bolsonaro instead finished nearly two points ahead. Compared with Datafolha's final numbers, that was a swing of almost five points toward him.

It was not the first time a Bolsonaro outran the surveys, with his father also beating his polling in 2022.

"I think the polls underestimated that, similar to Argentina, Brazil, and U.S. elections, Bolsonaro has supporters who are not revealing their support until they get to the polls," Sánchez said.

Patricio Navia, a clinical professor of liberal studies at New York University, said that unless pollsters corrected whatever caused the miss, they are likely to repeat it on Sunday, which would favor Bolsonaro. Turnout is the wild card, he noted. Abstention was high in the first round, and Lula has spent the runoff trying to bring new voters out.

Finishing second on October 4 jolted Lula's campaign. Michael Shifter, a senior fellow and former president of the Inter-American Dialogue, said the president has since run a more aggressive race, leaning on promises of new government programs and a sharper social media operation.

In their first head-to-head runoff debate, aired by Band on October 18, Lula pressed the Bolsonaro family to open its bank records, and Bolsonaro tried to tie the president to the Banco Master scandal. Few expect it to move many voters.

Debates rarely shift an election unless someone stumbles badly, Navia said, and neither candidate did.

Shifter thought a visibly energized Lula, who turns 81 on Tuesday, may have eased some doubts about his age.

"I think Lula needed a knockout victory. He didn't get that," Oliver Stuenkel, a professor of international relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo, told Newsweek.

Still, he said, some Bolsonaro voters from the first round now realize they know little about the senator's agenda "beyond sort of vague security populism and getting his father out of prison."

Sánchez faulted both men for spending the night attacking each other instead of speaking to what voters actually need.

A final debate on TV Globo on Friday night delivered the campaign's most emotional moment. Criticizing the government's economic record, Bolsonaro said Lula gives with one hand and "takes away with nine fingers," a jab at the finger the president lost in a factory accident as a young metalworker.

Lula demanded an apology, tying the remark to workers hurt on the job, and Bolsonaro gave one. "Lula, if I offended you by calling you 'nine fingers,' then I sincerely apologize," he said, before asking whether Lula would apologize to Brazilians in debt.In his closing remarks, Lula apologized too, for the heated tone he had taken.

"I don't expect even the final debate to have a decisive impact," Stuenkel said.

Flávio Bolsonaro, 45, has represented Rio de Janeiro in the Senate since 2019. His father, who is in prison after being convicted in 2025 of plotting a coup to overturn his 2022 loss to Lula, picked him as the family's candidate in December.

The senator has cultivated close ties to the Trump administration. He met Trump in the Oval Office in May, along with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. During that trip, he urged Washington to designate Brazil's two most powerful criminal organizations as terrorist groups, a step the administration announced days later. He has also promised to bring Brazil into Trump's Shield of the Americas security initiative.

The relationship with Washington has also been a liability. Trump's 50 percent tariffs on Brazilian goods in 2025, imposed in part over the prosecution of Jair Bolsonaro, were unpopular in Brazil, and Lula has framed U.S. pressure as an attack on national sovereignty. Flávio Bolsonaro chose not to seek Trump's endorsement, and Trump has largely stayed out of the runoff.

The election is also a major test of Trump's assertive approach to Latin America, a revival of the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine nicknamed the "Donroe Doctrine." It has included the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in January, financial support for Argentine President Javier Milei and open backing of conservative candidates in the region.

A Bolsonaro victory would make Brazil the eighth Latin American country to elect a right or center-right leader since Trump returned to office in 2025, following wins including José Antonio Kast's in Chile and Abelardo de la Espriella in Colombia.

"Despite sharp differences with some regional counterparts, in broad terms Bolsonaro would fit with the notably conservative trend in Latin America," Shifter said.

Contact Newsweek editors for this story: Anthony Murray and Jason Lemon.