Brazil’s general election will be all about Lula—again

The 2 to the highest degree thickly settled countries in the Americas feature important elections in 2026. In October Brazilians will choose a president, all 513 federal deputies, 54 of the country’s 81 senators and all 27 state governors. In November voters in the United States will renew Congress and elect 36 governors. The 79-year-old president, Donald Trump, is suffering from the lowest approval ratings of his second term. The latest polls suggest that his opponents will take control of at least one branch of the legislature in 2026 and will be able to start checking Mr Trump’s executive power.

Brazil’s elections may well be kinder to incumbent president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula. That is remarkable. In early 2025 Lula’s approval ratings were crumbling. Tainted by widespread corruption scandals during his first two terms, he has been extremely vulnerable to accusations of graft anywhere in his government, such as a scandal at Brazil’s pensions institute, during his third term. The 80-year-old—just 11 months younger than Joe Biden was at the equivalent point in his aborted re-election campaign against Mr Trump—had just undergone brain surgery. The Brazilian left, dominated by Lula’s Workers’ Party (PT), was on the verge of full-blown panic.

Then came Mr Trump’s tariffs, a failed assault on Brazil’s justice system, and, in November, the jailing of Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s former president. The right has flailed in the vacuum left by its populist figurehead. Lula’s approval ratings have surged. As things stand he is now the favourite to win in October. A fourth term would put him in the same exclusive presidential league as Franklin D. Roosevelt.

When Lula returned to power in January 2023 he promised to finish work left undone during his first two stints as president, between 2003 and 2010. He vowed to end hunger in Brazil, expand access to electricity and reduce taxes on the poor. He took a while to make good on his word, spending much of his first two years in office trying to bolster Brazil’s global prominence, often angering allies in the process. Markets panicked about his spendthrift government; in 2024 the real was the world’s worst-performing major currency.

Lula’s finance ministry then made a concerted effort to win back market confidence while maintaining popular support. It squeezed spending on disability benefits and on Bolsa Familia, Brazil’s well-regarded welfare programme. Gabriel Galípolo, a Lula appointee who has run the central bank since January 2025, has kept interest rates sky-high. At the same time the government expanded subsidised access to electricity and mortgages, and distributed free cooking gas to the poorest families.In November the Senate passed reforms that mean 16m Brazilians will now pay less or no income tax. Brazil has also benefited from the fall in the value of the dollar since Mr Trump took office in January 2025. The appreciation of the real has slashed food inflation, buoying Lula’s base.

Yet Lula’s greatest gift has come from the missteps of his opponents. Since November Mr Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year prison sentence for attempting a coup after he lost his re-election bid in 2022. As his prospects dimmed, he and his family became desperate. His son Eduardo left his post as a congressman in Brazil and moved to Texas to lobby Mr Trump’s circle. Mr Trump responded by imposing sanctions on Alexandre de Moraes, the judge who oversaw Mr Bolsonaro’s case, and slapping tariffs on Brazilian imports.

This was deeply unpopular in Brazil. Most people saw the tariffs and sanctions as an affront to the country’s sovereignty. Right-wing presidential hopefuls squirmed as they tried to disassociate themselves from the Bolsonaro family’s machinations while aiming to win over Bolsonaro supporters. Meanwhile Lula took to wearing a blue cap with “Brazil belongs to Brazilians” on the front.

Lula appears to have impressed Mr Trump. After the pair spoke by phone in December Mr Trump called the chat “great” and said “I like him.” One insider says Lula has told Mr Trump that Mr Bolsonaro is “a loser” whom Mr Trump would forget if he only got to know him. That seems to be happening. In recent weeks Mr Trump has lifted the sanctions on Mr Moraes and removed many tariffs on Brazilian goods, which were in any case driving up food prices in the United States and creating cost-of-living problems for Mr Trump’s supporters.

With Mr Bolsonaro in prison and Mr Trump pally with Lula, the right has latched onto security in an attempt to find an issue on which they can compete with the president. Brazilians now rate crime as their most important problem (see chart). Unlike in the rest of Latin America, security in Brazil is mostly the responsibility of state governments. That makes it harder to ascribe blame to the president, but also allows state governors to take credit for improvements. Thomas Traumann, a political analyst in Rio de Janeiro, says the right is “all talk, no trousers”. “What else do they have to talk about except security?”

They are not helped by the fact that in early December Mr Bolsonaro anointed Flávio, another of his sons, as his political successor. The response was dismal. Most of Brazil’s centre-right parties, which dominate Congress, suggest they will not back him. The real slumped and São Paulo’s stock exchange fell sharply on fears that Lula, whom the business community still does not trust, will crush Flávio and cruise to a fourth term. Mr Bolsonaro’s voters prefer his wife, Michelle, to any of his four sons. Silas Malafaia, an evangelical pastor, summed up the mood: “The right’s amateurism makes the left laugh.”

Because the right wing is so fragmented, Flávio could still make it to the second round if he stays in the race, though he would probably lose to Lula by quite a margin. The other candidates, all governors of populous states, are relatively unknown. Making it to the run-off “would maintain [Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party] as the biggest party in Brazil and show Bolsonarismo’s strength”, says Jairo Nicolau, the author of a book on Brazil’s right. But it would doom the right to another term under Lula.

Brazil’s elite had hoped that Mr Bolsonaro would tap Tarcísio de Freitas, his former infrastructure minister, now the governor of São Paulo. Mr Freitas has portrayed himself as a moderate, pandering to bolsonaristas by letting the police run riot in poor neighbourhoods while courting financial bigwigs by privatising São Paulo’s water company. But he will probably run only if he receives Mr Bolsonaro’s blessing. The latest polls show Flávio’s popularity plunging, and Lula’s falling too, though he still leads the field. If Mr Freitas builds and maintains a strong polling lead, then perhaps Mr Bolsonaro will change his mind. That could unite the right, giving Mr Freitas control of a powerful electoral machine and allowing him to court the moderates who will determine the election.

Most Brazilians are fed up with both Lula and the Bolsonaros, and want neither on the ballot. They may get half of their wish come October, but not all.

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