Lula wins fourth term in Brazil runoff
Court's two-hour voting extension turns first-round defeat into 4.3 million vote victory, Flávio Bolsonaro refuses concession and demands annulment
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Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva speaks after winning the presidential runoff election, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, beating Flávio Bolsonaro. Photograph: Brian Snyder/Reuters
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Flavio Bolsonaro speaks after the results of the general election were announced. Photograph: Ton Molina/Getty Images
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Lula addresses supporters during a victory rally after winning a fourth term on Sunday. Photograph: André Penner/AP
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A Lula supporter celebrates after the election result is announced. Photograph: Tita Barros/Reuters
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Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has won a fourth term as Brazil's president, defeating the far-right Flávio Bolsonaro with 51.79 percent of the runoff vote to 48.21. The 80-year-old incumbent overturned a first-round defeat of 2.2 million votes to win by a margin of 4.3 million — the first time since Brazil's return to democracy that a first-round runner-up has gone on to take the second round. Flávio Bolsonaro, 45, told supporters during Lula's victory speech that it was "impossible to concede" and that his legal team would seek to have the result annulled. The reversal followed a decision by the electoral court to extend voting by two hours after Lula's campaign complained that bus shortages had kept rural voters from the polls — districts that lean heavily toward the president. Abstention, which hit a record 21.08 percent in the first round and disproportionately affected Lula voters living far from polling stations, fell to 19.21 percent in the runoff. Lula addressed a São Paulo conference hall with vows to change "the way that this country is governed," calling the result "a defeat for denialism" and crediting democracy itself. His vice-president, Geraldo Alckmin, told the crowd it had "saved Brazilian democracy for the second time." The same court that granted the extension is the institution whose justices put Flávio's father, Jair Bolsonaro, behind bars for 27 years over an attempted coup — and whose entanglements with the banker at the center of the country's largest banking-fraud case Flávio built his entire campaign around attacking. Markets had priced a Bolsonaro victory: Brazilian equities saw their largest single-day foreign inflow on record and the Brazil fund EWZ jumped 12.5 percent when the first-round numbers landed. Tens of thousands of Brazilians celebrated on Paulista Avenue while the losing side, which never accepted the court's legitimacy, now asks it to annul the count.