Lula Wins Runoff as Serbian Protesters Oust Vucic

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva trailed Flavio Bolsonaro after Brazil's first round of voting, then surged past him in the runoff to win by more than 4 million votes. The result landed alongside the parliamentary election in Serbia, where Aleksandar Vucic was removed from power after 14 years. Both outcomes materialized on the same day this week.

Lula, 81, entered the race after seven straight presidential elections across Latin America in the past 18 months had swung to the right. In five of those contests, voters had removed an incumbent. The Brazilian president also faced Meta's restriction of his social media accounts and its promotion of his opponent's. Lula's coalition said mayors backing Bolsonaro disrupted public transportation to suppress turnout, a charge the source article reports without independent confirmation.

Lula's campaign organized a 10 million person network on WhatsApp to distribute its message. He has pledged to hold Big Tech to account and to protect the Amazon from deforestation, positions that drew opposition from some business interests. Climate activist Bill McKibben said the result would save lives: "I bet (Lula's win) shaves a tenth of a degree off how hot our earth eventually gets, which will save millions of lives."

In Serbia, a movement that began in 2024 after a railway station roof collapse killed 16 people turned into a political force. Students blamed state corruption for the collapse, and their protests continued despite violent repression. They later fielded a candidate list for this year's parliamentary election, running against an incumbent who had spent 14 years shaping the media, the judiciary and other state institutions. The contest on Sunday ended with Vucic's removal.

Elizabeth Shackelford, a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune and a lecturer at Dartmouth College's Dickey Center, connected both outcomes to her own experience as a U.S. diplomat in Mogadishu a decade ago. At a watch party for the 2016 election with Somali political, business and civil society leaders, she recalled searching for words as the results came in: "Democracy can be surprising!" She said she could not discuss her concerns openly because she represented the U.S. government there.

Both countries now face economic strain and electorates that remain dissatisfied. Governments in a democracy must return to the public and be judged on delivery, Shackelford wrote. She noted that U.S. policy has promoted democracy abroad for 80 years to preserve that accountability.