Brazil smackdown: Lula vs. Bolsonaro, final round

A man walks past Brazilian presidential campaign materials showing candidates Lula and Bolsonaro in Brasilia.
A man walks past Brazilian presidential campaign materials showing candidates Lula and Bolsonaro in Brasilia.
REUTERS/Adriano Machado

It’s a presidential election between two bitter rivals, each with tens of millions of supporters who see the other as a threat to democracy itself. Sound familiar? It’s not the 2024 US election just yet. No, it’s this Sunday’s presidential smackdown – er, runoff – in Brazil.

The contenders: Brazil’s far-right incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro faces his political nemesis, left-wing former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as “Lula.”

What the polls say. Lula has an average lead of about 3.5 points, with some polls showing as much as 6 points. But pollsters’ failure to predict Bolsonaro’s strong showing in the first round suggests this race could still be more of a toss-up than it seems. Undecideds make up about 4% of the electorate.

This is Brazil’s most polarized election since its return to democracy in the 1980s, says Guga Chacra, a prominent political commentator for Brazil’s GloboNews.

“These are two candidates that people really love and really hate,” he says. “Supporters of Bolsonaro or Lula see them as gods, and they see the other guy as the worst thing that could ever happen.”

So, what’s this election really about?

For some, it’s about the survival of Brazil’s democracy. Bolsonaro, who has railed against the press and the courts throughout his term, has spent months casting doubt on the credibility of Brazil’s electronic voting systems. That’s pushed many of Lula’s former rivals into supporting him for the sake of the country’s institutions. Here’s center-left ex-President Fernando Enrique Cardoso endorsing Lula, a man he beat twice in elections himself.

But Bolsonaro supporters have their own gripes about the fairness of the electoral institutions, says Chris Garman, Brazil director at Eurasia Group. They point to the appointment of an anti-Bolsonaro supreme court justice as an unaccountable fake news ombudsman, as well as a raid on the homes of several pro-Bolsonaro businessmen who simply expressed support for a coup in a WhatsApp chat. Electoral authorities have pressured local TV stations over drawing attention to Lula’s (now vacated) corruption convictions.

“It’s a death trap,” says Garman. “Each side views the other as a threat to the democratic order.”

For others: é a economia, estúpido.For most voters, though, the economy is the top issue. Bolsonaro’s pitch is that he’s cleaned up corruption, reduced crime, and got the country on a path to economic recovery after years of recession and the devastation of the pandemic. Unemployment is now at its lowest level in 6 years, inflation is high but falling, and the economy is growing again, if slowly. He also commands strong support among social ultra-conservatives and Brazil’s rapidly growing Evangelical population.

But with incomes still way below pre-pandemic levels, Lula’s pledges of more social spending, along with his track record of lifting tens of millions of Brazilians out of poverty when he was president in the 2000s, are likely what is giving him the edge in polls.

“The joke is that Lula is actually the Trump candidate,” Garman says, “because his pitch is “Let’s make Brazil Great Again.”

What comes after? If the polls are right, and Lula wins, a Brazilian 6 de Janeiro is a real possibility, though Garman says concerns about a coup by Bolsonaro’s supporters in the military are overblown. “The military doesn’t want that kind of disorder,” he says.

Still, he points out, Lula would have a hard time governing, with half the country convinced that his election was illegitimate, and with Bolsonaro-allied forces now strongly positioned in Congress after a surge in the first round of the election.

The stakes for the world? Just breathe. A Lula presidency, if it happens, would add to the recent “pink tide” in Latin America, and would also ease relations between Brazil and its partners in the US and Europe, which were strained under the populist nationalist Bolsonaro.

But the most important Brazilian election impact for the rest of the world would be in the air, literally. Brazil is home to most of the Amazon rainforest, known as “the lungs of the world.” Although deforestation was ongoing during Lula’s years in power, he has pledged greater measures to protect it than Bolsonaro, whose support for the regions’s small farmers led to some of the largest deforestation numbers in years.

More from GZERO Media

Russian President Vladimir Putin could talks with President Donald Trump as early as this week. Artem Priakhin/SOPA Images via Reuters Connect
Artem Priakhin/SOPA Images via Reuters Connect

US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will discuss America’s 30-day ceasefire proposal this week after Ukraine endorsed the plan last Tuesday but Putin torpedoed it with a list of conditions.

President Donald Trump looks on as military strikes are launched against Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis over the group's attacks against Red Sea shipping, at an unspecified location in this handout image released March 15, 2025.

White House/Handout via REUTERS

The United States launched widespread strikes on the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen on Saturday, killing 31 people and injuring another 101 — mostly women and children — as it targeted military sites and a power station in the rebel group’s southwest stronghold.

President Donald Trump speaks to reporters before boarding Air Force One as he departs from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, on March 14, 2025.

REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

On Saturday, a judge pulled the plug on President Trump's plans to expel Venezuelans supposedly linked to gangs, temporarily blocking the White House from using a law from 1798 to do so. The judge ordered the administration to turn around any planes that were already en route, but more than 200 Venezuelans reportedly landed in El Salvador after the ruling.

Listen: In seven short weeks, the Trump administration has completely reshaped US foreign policy and upended trade alliances. Will China benefit from US retrenchment and increasing global uncertainty, or will its struggling economy hold it back? On the GZERO World Podcast, Bill Bishop, a China analyst and author of the Sinocism newsletter, joins Ian Bremmer for a wide-ranging conversation about China—its domestic priorities, global administration, and whether America’s retreat from global commitments is opening new doors for Beijing.

German Chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz speaks to the media after he reached an agreement with the Greens on a massive increase in state borrowing just days ahead of a parliamentary vote next week, in Berlin, Germany, on March 14, 2025.
REUTERS/Axel Schmidt

Germany’s election-winning center-right Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union, led by Friedrich Merz, and the Social Democrats have reached a preliminary agreement with the Green Party on a deal to exclude defense spending from the country’s constitutional debt break and establish a dedicated $545 billion fund for infrastructure investments.

A Russian army soldier walks along a ruined street of Malaya Loknya settlement, which was recently retaken by Russia's armed forces in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict in the Kursk region, on March 13, 2025.

Russian Defence Ministry/Handout via REUTERS

The Russian leader has conditions of his own for any ceasefire with Ukraine, and he also wants a meeting with Donald Trump.

Mahmoud Khalil speaks to members of the media about the Revolt for Rafah encampment at Columbia University on June 1, 2024.

REUTERS/Jeenah Moon

The court battle over whether the US can deport Mahmoud Khalil, the 30-year-old Palestinian-Algerian activist detained in New York last Saturday, began this week in Manhattan. Khalil, an outspoken activist for Palestinian rights at Columbia University, was arrested Saturday at his apartment in a university-owned building at Columbia University by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, and he is now being held in an ICE detention center in Louisiana.