Brasile, vittoria senza egemonia

The 2026 Brazilian presidential election produced an unprecedented reversal: for the first time, a candidate trailing after the first round, Lula da Silva, won the runoff, defeating Flávio Bolsonaro with 51.79 per cent of the vote and a record 64.2 million ballots. Lula’s third term never produced a coherent hegemonic narrative, and discontent concentrated among the lower middle class, squeezed between food prices, indebtedness and precarious labour, while a right-leaning Congress controlling the budget through parliamentary amendments deprived the executive of its traditional currency of exchange. In the first round, the Banco Master scandal paradoxically damaged the government more than the right, as revelations concerning Justice Alexandre de Moraes fused the credibility of the Supreme Federal Tribunal with that of the executive. In the runoff, the campaign shifted to Flávio Bolsonaro’s ties to militias and the memory of his father’s government, while André Janones’s WhatsApp channel “Exército do Lula” reinvigorated a demoralised base. The fourth term opens under unfavourable conditions: a Congress where the Liberal Party is the largest force, a Senate majority open to impeaching Supreme Court justices, and a Workers’ Party without clear heirs. The argument is that the Brazilian left has twice in four years won against someone rather than for something: victory can be wrested by mobilising fear of the adversary, whereas hegemony demands a vision of the country. Without such a horizon, fear may have won an election, but is unlikely to win another Ebook PDF