Conversation

That first round loss for Lula really seems to have shocked people into voting in the second.

— ‘Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian president, has staged a dramatic election fightback, defeating his far-right opponent, Flávio Bolsonaro, to claim a historic fourth term in power.

With 100% of votes counted the 80-year-old leftist received 4.4m votes more than Bolsonaro, with a 51.79% share to his 45-year-old rival’s 48.21%. However, soon after Brazil’s electoral authority confirmed Lula’s victory, Bolsonaro refused to concede defeat and asked for the results to be annulled.

Lula narrowly lost the first round of the election to Bolsonaro in early October, casting his political future into doubt and plunging progressive Brazilians into three weeks of despair. Never, since the return of democracy in the 1980s, has the first round runner-up won the second vote.’

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/26/lula-wins-brazil-election

Two out of four so far (Israel and the US to come).

— ‘The long-serving leader of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, has conceded defeat, ushering in a seismic political shift after a historic election that saw ​the increasingly authoritarian leader pitted against a student-led movement that had spent two years protesting against his government.

Vučić pointed to preliminary results that suggested voters had overwhelmingly backed the students, potentially giving them a majority in the country’s 250-seat parliament.

“We still do not have final ⁠results,” Vučić told supporters at his party headquarters in Belgrade. “On the basis of a sample … it is clear ⁠that we have lost these ​elections, the Student ‌List has ‌won, they will have between 135 ‌and 140 seats and we will have 105.”’

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/25/serbian-leader-aleksandar-vucic-concedes-defeat-in-fiercely-contested-parliamentary-election