With nearly all of the vote counted, the Workers’ Party’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva commands an unassailable lead over incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, 50.9% to 49.10%, representing a difference of over two million votes.
It’s now clear that Lula will ascend for a third term as president; what remains to be seen however, is how Bolsonaro responds to the result. The right-wing president had been raising the spectre of electoral fraud in the lead-up to the polls, and his son went so far as to claim ‘the greatest electoral fraud ever seen’ before counting even began. As of Monday, Bolsonaro has yet to make an official statement or concede, but key allies have signaled that they accept Lula’s victory, even Sergio Moro, the judge-turned-justice-minister who was instrumental in jailing Lula ahead of the 2018 election.