# Lula's last dance: Brazil votes on democracy

> The Brazilian president faces a career-ending defeat as voters choose between defending democracy or swinging right.
- Title: Lula's last dance: Brazil votes on democracy · The New Yorker
- Summary: The Brazilian president faces a career-ending defeat as voters choose between defending democracy or swinging right. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva faces likely…
- Keywords: luiz inácio lula da silva, flavio bolsonaro, brazil, presidential election, democracy, latin america, jair bolsonaro, workers' party, politics, news, Lula's, last
- Source: The New Yorker — https://newyorker.com/news/global-notes/lulas-last-dance
- Author: Ishaan Tharoor
- Published: 2026-10-21T10:00:00+00:00
- Read time: 3 min
- Topics: luiz inácio lula da silva, flavio bolsonaro, brazil, presidential election, democracy, latin america, jair bolsonaro, workers' party, politics, news
## Lula's final campaign
Supporters of eighty-year-old Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva used David Bowie and Queen's 1981 hit Under Pressure in a viral video showing his half century in politics, from trade unionist to democracy defender.

> This is our last dance.
## The stakes this weekend
Brazilians vote in the second round of their presidential election. Lula faces a career-ending defeat, with odds favoring hard-right challenger Flavio Bolsonaro, who seeks to unravel Lula's legacy.
## The first round shock
On October fourth, the incumbent placed two points behind Bolsonaro, currently a senator. Right-wing parties and candidates surged in congressional and state elections across the country.
## Latin America swings right
Brazil is poised to become the most important entry on a long list of Latin American states that have swung right in the past two years.
## History against Lula
The first-round winner in Brazil's presidential race has won the second-round vote in every election stretching back to nineteen eighty-nine, the first direct presidential election held after redemocratization following military dictatorship.
## Lula's democratic legacy
Lula was elected president in two thousand two and served two terms until the end of twenty ten.
## Environmental and global leadership
Lula positioned Brazil as a world leader in climate action, helping slow Amazon deforestation. He led Brazil into the vanguard of the Global South, charting an independent line in foreign policy.
## The corruption conviction
Lula was convicted of corruption and money laundering in twenty eighteen and given a twelve-year sentence.Five hundred and eighty days later, he was released after a court ruled he had been denied adequate due process.
## Bolsonaro's presidency
Jair Bolsonaro, a hard-right former Army man, was elected instead. As president, he slashed Lula's environmental protections, cut funding to universities and housing programs, and badly mismanaged the pandemic.
## The January eighth insurrection
On January eighth, twenty twenty-three, thousands of Bolsonaro supporters stormed Brasilia, vandalizing the Supreme Court, Congress, and the Presidential Palace. Brazilian authorities determined Bolsonaro was part of a coup plot to oust Lula.
## Bolsonaro's sentence
Jair Bolsonaro is currently serving a twenty-seven-year sentence under house arrest. The insurrection drew immediate parallels to the United States Capitol riot.
## Lula's political challenge
Lula's politics, rooted in unions and labor movements from the nineteen-seventies and eighties, don't register much in a Brazil reshaped by atomized gig economies.
## Bolsonaro's campaign promises
Flavio Bolsonaro has promised a ruthless crackdown on crime, with expanded maximum-security prisons and chemical castration for convicted rapists.
## Brazil's global role at stake
Lula is a champion of the Palestinian cause.Bolsonaro, like his father, has befriended the Israeli right.A Flavio victory could see Brazil weaken commitments to the UN climate treaty and non-Western blocs such as BRICS.
## Lula's warning on Trump
In an interview with The New Yorker last year, Lula described his uneasiness watching Trump.He lamented the waning of the international order, saying, I saw a speech of his in the U.S.

> I saw a speech of his in the U.S. Congress recently, and it was absurd, those Republicans clapping at whatever nonsense he said.
## Lula's final hope
Lula is hoping that millions of disaffected Brazilians who didn't vote in the first round may yet come out to cast a ballot for him in the runoff.
## Key takeaway

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva faces likely defeat in Brazil's presidential runoff, potentially ending his political career and shifting Latin America further right.