Lula wins election after final votes tallied

laurenth 288 points 277 comments October 26, 2026
www.reuters.com · View on Hacker News

Discussion Highlights (20 comments)

matheusmoreira

Deeply unfortunate, but not entirely unexpected. Lula was allowed to do every "electoral crime" they barred Bolsonaro from doing in 2022. They even extended voting time, a move that directly benefiting him, and also ruled illegal back in 2022. Gotta look on the bright side. Bolsonaro was closer to US interests than I'd like. If the elected right wing senate manages to at least impeach some supreme court justices next year, I'm going to be OK with this. I submitted the news too and it got flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50237256

abdelhousni

Fascism loses, maybe there is hope for the rest of the world.

brazukadev

Really unexpected. Polymarket was like 80% Bolsonaro Jr to 20% Lula 7pm, 7:15 it changed to 60% Lula. There were multiple reports in the news websites about it favoring Bolsonaro which itself probably made some people vote for him. I'm quite happy with the result tho. Let's see how the far right opposition will take this loss. I'm already expecting the worse.

subdude

Heartening after all the interference the US and its oligarchs threw at this election.

nemomarx

This is probably a good support case for run-off elections being beneficial.

thimabi

Once again, a clear anti-Bolsonaro vote from the majority of the electorate. Lula won because he got last-minute support from the moderates and even some right-wingers. It certainly does not feel like a victory of the left. Now he will face a much bigger opposition in Congress and therefore will have to find a middle ground. I expect his policies to move even further to the right. This might pave the way for his vice-president Alckmin, a historical right-winger, to run in the 2030 elections — likely against São Paulo’s governor Tarcísio de Freitas, also a right-winger and considered more moderate than the Bolsonaros despite being associated with them. (reposting my own comment from a related thread)

supjeff

The one good thing about the current system is that shitheads like musk can spend half-a-billion to buy elections, but the people still have the final say.

hinow

Parabéns Lula! Uffaaaaaa

medellin

In this thread.. people whose context on the election ranges from “i saw it on my feed a week ago and have a really valid opinion” to “that one guy is a total fascist”. HN you are full on retarded

bguberfain

This was the first time I saw a major mainstream media outlet prominently feature a statistical predictive model live during the vote count (and it was spot on): https://www.estadao.com.br/politica/eleicoes/em-tempo-real-p...

jonifico

I am not from Brazil, nor am I closely following its politics, but I would like to pose a genuine question: in a modern liberal democracy, doesn’t a four-term presidency represent too much power concentrated in one person?

soneca

I have a learning a bit more related to tech from this election. Centrally organized, cohesive, persistent online engagement wins elections. It won for Bolsonaro whose campaign nailed it in 2018. It didn’t win in 2022 because he was completely bad in dealing with pandemics (mocking people dying and saying he had nothing to do with it being president). Now, Lula’s campaign was absolutely dead during the whole time. Until it lost in the legislative by a mile and in the President run had a partial loss in the first round. Then the campaign lit up after the partial upset. Janones, an energetic young guy elected to legislative with good online presence led the campaign. He achieved creating a WhatsApp group with 11 million people called “Lula’s army”. He would give the directions and the people would obey almost blindly. The interwebs (basically WhatsApp + Instagram) got flooded with this top to bottom Lula’s campaign. The first round results made Bolsonaro very favorite. Lula victory was a huge upset. I put the merit in this incessant social media campaign. The thing is: “centrally planned cohesive campaign” looks a lot like a cult. The point of the campaign is not critical thought or argumentation, it is incessant messaging. Think fandoms. Bolsonaro voters pejorative nickname from past campaigns was they were all “cattle”. Because that is how they behaved online. Ironically, what worked for Lula voters this year was they behaving like “cattle”. Just reposting and following this central orders on what to post, what to say, what to dress. The thing is, it works. Cult-like fandoms work in elections. The right won a few elections like this in the world. In Brazil, the left just learned how to do it was well. The more mindless posters a politician has following their campaign HQ orders, the more votes they have.

swingandamiss

I truly hate what HN has become. It has all the expected comments about Musk, fascism, etc. This is exactly why I stopped going to reddit.

fn-mote

As optimistic as I want to be, this is the fourth term for a president?? That cannot be good for democracy. It can be better than the alternatives and still not good.

leandrod

An opaque, illegal system. Brazilian law states votes must be counted publicly.

eviks

Are humans still involved in summarizing? Why is "What you need to know" missing the vote count even though the title is about votes?

fitblipper

I was seeing the reports from the first pass which said it was almost guaranteed that Lula would not win because of what the results of the first were. I wonder what caused that prediction to fail. I am glad the son of a failed coup organizer and a trump puppet didn't get elected and am hopeful for Brazils ability to self govern. Breaking free of US financial monopolies (credit cards) gives me hope they'll continue to produce and innovative into a healthier and competitive world market, but I am also tired of Lula being at the helm and wish someone else could step up and take the reigns. When someone stays in power for so long in a democracy it makes me suspicious of the legitimacy of their power. Are they popular because they are good for the country or are they popular because they have the right people with power, influence, and money on their side.

itubaj

It was anyway a lose-lose situation. I hope to see Brazil free from 'bolsopetismo'/'bolsolulismo' (as some of we call this disease to keep Bolsonaro and Lula or their parties on the presidential room) soon, but here we go for another 4 years...

zapataband1

An area of Amazon forest roughly the size of the US state of New Jersey has remained standing due to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s leadership of Brazil, according to Carbon Brief analysis. https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-lula-presidency-saved-a... for those partying https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vL--PrvsJ0

willmadden

Lula used a justice he appointed to order polling stations to stay open past the agreed upon deadline without consulting the courts that are supposed to rule on election matters. That's election interference. I'm not convinced the population is going to see him as legitimate after that stunt.

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