Flávio Bolsonaro's first-round presidential victory in Brazil could offer a post-2028 parallel for his ally Donald Trump, a Latin American analyst told Newsweek. Bolsonaro, son of the disgraced former president, Jair Bolsonaro, won 47 percent of the vote in Sunday’s ballot, ahead of incumbent left-wing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, ensuring a second-round showdown on October 25. Jair Bolsonaro is serving a 27-year sentence for plotting a coup to stay in power after he lost the 2022 election to Lula.
Trump has backed the jailed former head of state whom Flávio Bolsonaro has said he would pardon if elected. While there is no sign that, like his Brazilian ally, Trump’s son will run for the Oval Office in 2028, a victory for Flávio Bolsonaro could give the U.S. president a blueprint for MAGA to survive turbulence, underwater polling and dwindling influence. Brazilians went to the polls on Sunday voting for presidential, congressional and gubernatorial candidates.
Among those Brazil’s electorate voted for were state parliamentarians, 27 state governors, 513 members of the lower house, and 54 members of the 81-seat senate. Bolsonaro, aligned with the Liberal Party, got 56.1 million votes. Lula, from the Workers' Party (PT), got 53.8 million votes.
Neither got 50 percent for an overall majority, but Bolsonaro is favored to win the second round with the likely addition of votes from supporters of the other right-wing candidates, which included Ronaldo Caiado and Renan Santos. The right or the far right also won 34 out of the 54 senators elected. Lula's campaign slogan accused the U.S. president of trying to help Bolsonaro to “colonize” Brazil and appropriate its natural resources.
Bolsonaro has pledged closer ties with Trump, whose influence in Latin America would be cemented if he were to win following the election of pro-Trump leaders in countries, including Chile, Colombia and Peru. But Lula’s tactic of making the election about non-intervention in Brazil’s affairs and national sovereignty did not play well, even if he did get a brief boost when he opposed Trump’s tariffs, said Sabatini. "They're talking about crime and insecurity and that is really one of the number one concerns in Brazil and across Latin America,” he said, “Lula and the center-left in Latin America has failed to provide a credible response to one of the number one concerns of citizens.” “Many of these populist movements, despite what political scientists like me would say, actually have more legs than we thought,” he added.
In Brazil, voting is mandatory for those aged between 18 and 70, although on Sunday, 21 percent sat out for the first round. Lula could try to claw some of these voters back, strike coalitions with other parties to woo moderate voters and highlight his opponent’s links to criminal groups in Rio De Janeiro, where he is a senator. But Flávio Bolsonaro told supporters on Sunday that Lula’s Workers’ Party faced “the end of an era” and said that the vote showed that people wanted a fresh face to the incumbent who has run for president seven times and turns 81 two days after the second-round vote.
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