Flávio Bolsonaro was ordered to hand over his passports on Monday. By Wednesday, he had landed in Miami and announced he would lead Brazil’s opposition from Trump’s America.
It was quite the exit for a man who, just three weeks ago, had beaten his opponent Lula da Silva in the first round of Brazil’s presidential election and was expected to return the right-wing Bolsonaro name to the presidency while his father, Jair, serves 27 years in prison for plotting a coup after his own election defeat in 2022.
Instead, Lula da Silva won Sunday’s runoff by 4.4 million votes, becoming the first candidate since Brazil’s return to democracy to overturn a first-round defeat.
This result is good news for the Amazon, climate action, and anyone watching the march of the far right.
But a gender story is emerging too, and progressive parties everywhere would be wise to consider it.
Women account for 53 per cent of registered voters and have been more resistant to Bolsonaro-aligned candidates than men.
Earlier this month, a survey put Lula ahead among women by 49 to 40 per cent, with Flavio leading among men by 52 to 40 per cent.
It’s a gap that’s been emerging since 2018, largely thanks to Jair Bolsonaro’s misogynistic rhetoric. And it hasn’t closed in his son’s favour. Flávio’s rejection rate among women was still 58 per cent just before the election.
Still, Flávio made efforts to swing female voters. He put his wife and daughters front and centre during his first TV ad, saying, “at home, they’re the ones in charge”.
But then it didn’t help that one of the most powerful women in Brazil — a conservative and also a Bolsonaro, Flávio’s stepmother Michelle Bolsonaro, claimed her stepson had “disrespected” and “mistreated” her by taking aim at her involvement in party affairs. At 44 and having just won a Senate seat, Michelle Bolsonaro was considered an effective campaigner to conservative women and an asset her stepson really needed to boost his appeal among women.
Michelle said in a video that, “I understood that he didn’t want my support – or that it was insignificant – so I withdrew, kept to myself.”
Lula, running for his fourth term, did something else.
He addressed 7000 female Workers’ Party candidates and shared claims that 40,000 perpetrators of violence against women had been arrested through a federal program. He promised gender equality classes in schools. He pushed through progressive policies in the weeks prior to the election, including a new policy to support microentrepreneurs, who make up the majority of active businesses in Brazil. Earlier this year, Lula da Silva’s government passed new laws that will extend paternity leave from five to 20 days by 2029.
Then, eleven days before the runoff, Brazil’s Senate voted 75 to one to end the “6×1” work week (that is, six days on, one day off), cutting the maximum work week from 44 to 40 hours with no loss of pay. Around 14 million people in Brazil work six days a week, with women overrepresented.
Lula’s campaign also successfully mobilised people to support his efforts.
Mass mobilisation of supporters on social media and in the streets through large, student-led rallies was instrumental in Lula’s win, with demonstrations rejecting Trump policies and challenging allegations that Meta had favoured far-right candidates, including Bolsonaro, by manipulating algorithms across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
Meta blamed technical failures, but evidence emerged that Lula’s campaign had been blocked from boosting social media posts for almost 24 hours.
A WhatsApp channel called Lula’s Army grew to more than 11 million members in days, a mobilisation effort that sought to organically boost Lula’s campaign across social media. The group sent “urgent!” messages and numerous instructions on what members could daily to ensure pro-Lula content was heard on social media. The congressman who set up the group, André Janones, ran a 24-hour YouTube livestream the day before the vote, and at one point his relentless efforts led to his admission to hospital.
With women aged 25 to 40 predominant among undecided voters before the runoff, Datafolha/Quaest polling showed the last fortnight of mobilising voters was especially powerful.
On Sunday night, Lula da Silva gave a gracious victory speech, noting the mobilisation that made it happen. “I want to thank the generosity of Brazil’s young people who took to the streets to defend democracy,” he said.
What happened in Brazil reflects an international trend and offers lessons for progressive parties everywhere pushing back against the far right. Women aren’t a niche constituency. They’re the majority of the electorate, and the right can’t win without them.