Into Monday mid-morning Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro still hasn’t conceded defeat to his leftist rival Luiz In?cio Lula da Silva. The results were announced fairly quickly after polls closed Monday evening.
After 100% of votes were reported counted, Lula barely passed the the required 50% mark, coming it at 50.9% to Bolsonaro’s 49.10%. At 60.3 million votes to the incumbent’s 58.2 million, this was a difference of just over 2 million votes.
“This country needs peace and unity,” Lula said in a victory speech in Sao Paulo. He said the challenge set before the country is “immense” while vowing “democracy is back” – in reference to Bolsonaro’s detractors often dubbing him a ‘far right dictator’.
As The Guardian observes, pressure is growing for Bolsonaro to officially concede, given that already, “A stream of world leaders have stepped forward to recognize Lula’s stunning political comeback, including the US president, Joe Biden, the UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, and China’s Communist party chief, Xi Jinping.”
The upset marks the first time in Brazilian history that a serving president has been voted out of office. Bolsonaro will serve until Lula takes over on January 1, 2023.
France24 notes that there’s currently a climate of trepidation as it’s unclear whether Bolsonaro will concede, and after there’s been instances of political violence among rival supporters during the campaign:
Lula supporters erupted into joy and celebration across the country, but not without trepidation. Since the first round of the elections on October 2, when Bolsonaro largely beat the polls and came out with an unexpectedly strong showing of 43 percent against Lula’s 48 percent, many feared that the incumbent could potentially claim a second straight mandate.
All eyes are also on Bolsonaro’s official social media accounts, which have been quiet for the past 24 hours. President Bolsonaro’s last tweet came shortly before midnight on the eve of the election. He quoted from the Bible, the book of Ephesians, which says “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil…”
Bolsonaro has recently expressed concern over the potential for the country’s voting machines to be manipulated or tampered with, something that his political opponents have dismissed as “Trump-style” election denial rhetoric.