Lula won re-election with 51.75% votes against Flávio Bolsonaro’s 48.25%.
He overturned a 2.2-million-vote first-round defeat within three weeks.
The former union leader previously won Brazil’s presidency in 2002.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian president, has been re-elected as president of the country after beating his right-wing rival, Flávio Bolsonaro.
Lula secured 51.75% of the vote, with almost 99% of the votes counted, defeating his 45-year-old rival, Flávio Bolsonaro, who received 48.25%. The result marked a turnaround for Lula, who had lost the opening round to Bolsonaro in early October.
That defeat had raised questions about his political future and left his progressive supporters waiting anxiously for the final vote. Since Brazil returned to democracy in the 1980s, no candidate who finished second in the first round had won the runoff.
Lula lost the first round by 2.2 million votes but won the runoff by a margin of 4.3 million, just three weeks later.
His allies had identified voter turnout as his biggest opportunity to close the gap. The number of people who stayed away from voting fell from 21.08% in the first round to 19.21% in the runoff.
Lula’s supporters often live farther from polling stations, which can make voting more difficult for them. During the campaign, Lula pointed to his government’s work on reducing poverty, inequality, unemployment, illiteracy, and deforestation.
He also warned that Bolsonaro’s return to power could mean lower welfare spending, a reversal of social progress and closer dependence on the United States under President Donald Trump.
Political Career Of Lula
Lula, who turns 81 on Tuesday, has reached another milestone in a political career that began in the late 1970s. He first came to prominence as a trade union leader in the industrial suburbs of São Paulo.
Born into poverty in rural Brazil, Lula worked in a factory before entering politics. He ran for president in 1989, 1994, and 1998 but lost all three elections. In 2002, he finally won the presidency, becoming Brazil’s first elected president from a working-class background.
After completing the two consecutive terms allowed under Brazil’s constitution, Lula left office. He returned to the presidency in 2022 after defeating Jair Bolsonaro, the father of his current rival. Bolsonaro was later jailed for plotting a coup.
Lula’s latest victory is a setback for Bolsonaro, who is serving a 27-year prison sentence over the failed coup attempt. Bolsonaro had hoped his son’s victory would help secure his release and give him a role in the government.
