Brazil 2026 election: Flávio Bolsonaro rejects Lula’s win, seeks annulment

Far-right senator and now former presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro said he would not accept Brazil’s election results following incumbent Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva triumph in Sunday’s runoff. 

The Liberal Party (PL, in Portuguese) candidate questioned the decision to extend voting by two hours on Sunday and warned that he would formally seek to have the election annulled.

Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former President Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022) — who is in prison for attempting to overturn the 2022 elections and kill Lula — said that “it is impossible to accept the results of these elections.” 

He claimed that a “dirty trick” had led to Da Silva’s victory, even though his own party had also requested an extension of voting hours, albeit for different reasons.

“What happened today was not normal; it was even unacceptable,” Bolsonaro said during a brief speech at the PL’s headquarters on Sunday night, after the vote count was complete.

According to the Supreme Electoral Court, President Da Silva won with 51.8% of the vote, while Bolsonaro trailed by 4.4 million votes, with 48.2%.

The result came as a surprise as Bolsonaro had won the general election with 47% on October 4 and was the favorite for the runoff, according to polls. Lula was the runner-up with 45% in the general race.

Voting extension Bolsonaro questioned the Federal Supreme Court’s decision to extend voting by two hours on Sunday. The order was issued just minutes after the original 5 p.m. deadline, causing confusion and chaos, as some polling stations had already closed and preliminary results were already being released. 

Ultimately, the Supreme Court and electoral authorities agreed not to reopen polling stations that had already closed.

“For the first time in history, a Supreme Court justice — a former lawyer for Lula — signed an order at the request of a former business partner and changed the rules of the game in the middle of the race, at 5:01 p.m.,” Flávio said, referring to Justice Cristiano Zanin.

Zanin’s decision came in response to a request from Lula’s Workers’ Party (PT, by its Portuguese initials) to extend voting nationwide on the grounds that public transportation problems had prevented many people from voting as usual.

However, Bolsonaro’s PL had also requested an extension, although only in the northeast region, because of heavy rainfall and flooding that affected several districts.

“Dirty trick” The opposition leader said Justice Zanin had “overridden” the Superior Electoral Court, the “appropriate judicial authority” on the matter, in a move that had “never happened in the history of Brazil.” 

He added that “there was a complete breach of equality among Brazilians and across various cities in different states.”

“I’ll never know how many votes I might have received in a state where the polls weren’t reopened. It’s inexplicable that what happened actually happened,” Bolsonaro said. “The elections should have been annulled given the circumstances at that moment.”

He also questioned the Supreme Court’s ties to Da Silva, arguing that the justices share the president’s ideological views. He said he “will not accept that the rules of the game were changed in the middle of the race.”

Bolsonaro also cast doubt on the legitimacy of the vote-counting process, claiming that the PL’s observers “were removed” from the room at the Supreme Electoral Court where the votes were being counted “the moment the decision was made.”

“There’s a lot that needs to be clarified before Brazil simply acknowledges this dirty trick that just took place in these elections,” he said, without providing details about the alleged irregularity.

How far will Bolsonaro’s claim go? A similar situation arose in 2022, when his father, Jair Bolsonaro, ran for reelection against Lula da Silva, who ultimately won. The former president had questioned the reliability of the electronic voting system.

Oliver Stuenkel, a professor of international relations at Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) in São Paulo, said in an X post that he expected Flávio Bolsonaro’s claims “to be less disruptive than his father’s refusal to concede four years ago.”

“Unlike Jair Bolsonaro in 2022, Flávio does not control the government. Nor did he spend months before the vote, as his father did, casting doubt on the voting machines, a campaign that convinced many of his father’s voters,” the analyst said.

Stuenkel added that Lula’s lead of more than 4 million votes over Bolsonaro, “about twice his 2022 margin, is probably too wide for a claim of irregularities to persuade many beyond the Bolsonaros’ core supporters.”