Flávio Bolsonaro, the 45-year-old senator and son of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, took 47% of the vote in Brazil's first-round presidential election on October 4. Incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the 80-year-old socialist icon the global establishment has spent four years propping up, finished with 45%.
Neither man cleared 50%, so they'll meet in a runoff on October 25.
Flávio's message to the country took two sentences: "Brazil wants change. It's the end of the Workers' Party era."
That's quite a result for a man whose father is in custody. Jair Bolsonaro, the original "Trump of the Tropics," lined Brazil up with the America First movement. He's now serving a 27-year sentence under house arrest. The Brazilian courts convicted him of plotting to overturn the 2022 election, which Lula won 50.9% to 49.1%. The establishment figured that convicting the father would end the movement. Instead, the son picked up the flag, and he's now leading the race against the man whose government put his dad away.
Lula tried to put a brave face on finishing second. "Tomorrow we start a new campaign," he said. "I am very good in the knockout stage."
He'll need to be. Every candidate who finished third, fourth and fifth ran from the right. The voters who chose neither Bolsonaro nor Lula in the first round lean heavily right, so Flávio's path is simple: hold the right together for three more weeks. That usually happens when the alternative is a socialist incumbent and the opposition's leader is sitting under house arrest.
The candidates went into Election Day running neck and neck, and Flávio came out of it two points ahead. The movement also showed up down the ballot. Bolsonaro's Liberal Party won 28 of the 81 Senate seats and 121 of the 513 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, the largest bloc in both chambers. Even if Lula survives the runoff, he'll be governing a Congress run by the other side.
Brazil is also the biggest piece yet in a pattern that has been building across Latin America for a year and a half.
In February 2025, the Trump administration froze USAID's money. By that summer, the agency had been folded into the State Department. Since then, Ecuador re-elected Daniel Noboa over the Correa left's candidate, 55.6% to 44.4%. Bolivia ended 20 years of socialist rule, and both finalists in its runoff came from the right. Honduras elected conservative Nasry Asfura, and Chile elected José Antonio Kast. In June, Peru elected Keiko Fujimori, and Colombia chose Abelardo de la Espriella over Iván Cepeda, the candidate of Gustavo Petro's leftist coalition.
That's six countries and six elections, and the left lost every one.
Nobody can prove USAID swung any single one of those races. But the agency had a side. Last October, former State Department official Mike Benz testified before a committee of Brazil's Chamber of Deputies. He said that while Jair Bolsonaro was president, Washington "poured more than US$90 million into USAID operations and its partners in Brazil." According to Benz, that money flowed to NGOs and fact-checking groups whose goal was "to strengthen the opposition and censor conservatives, especially on social media."
That was American taxpayers' money. It was spent on the people working against a Brazilian president who was one of America's closest allies in the hemisphere, under the banner of "democracy."
Then the money stopped, and the left started losing races it used to win.
The international press is already calling Flávio's rise a danger. The same outlets that called his father a fascist and cheered his conviction now warn that the son threatens Brazilian "democracy." By their logic, democracy is in danger whenever the wrong side wins it.
The wave reaches well beyond Latin America. Javier Milei is running Argentina, Giorgia Meloni is running Italy, and Le Pen's party keeps gaining in France. Brazil is the largest country in South America, and it could be next.
Lula won in 2022 by convincing Brazilians that Bolsonarismo was a fever that would break. The Workers' Party bet that putting Jair Bolsonaro behind bars would kill the movement.
Four years later, his son is at 47%, and his party controls the largest blocs in Congress. The runoff is October 25, two days before Lula turns 81.