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I'm not surprised. If you have one terrible candidate, in the first round you can vote for whomever you like. In the second round, however, you need to ensure they lose, so you vote for the opposite party, whomever they might be.

There were 10 presidential elections in Brazil after the post-1988 constitutional system, with 2 of those decided in the first round.

8 is a really small sample to consider it as unusual, plus the reversal was not that huge 1.8%

This has been widely discredited.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9y7l0pm8jkko

Facebook/Meta openly supporting Bolsanaro and sabotaging Lula probably mattered a lot more. Here's them acknowledging funny business:

https://mronline.org/2026/10/16/meta-acknowledges-the-reduce...

If that were true it would have diminished Lula "support" as Lula is strongly preferred by Russia due to his anti-US and anti-NATO stance.

Not everything you'd want to be true, is. Checking makes the difference, you just need to do it.

Hell of an allegation to make with no evidence provided. How do "they" "have" the supreme court, and why does that mean that they're popular and win elections?

And of course, like always you will present no proof other than 'everyone knows'

Really? Didn't the Bolsanaro campaign also request an extension of the voting deadline due to water logging and transportation problems in parts of the country?

They are most competent in getting elected, which often is not the same as being most competent in anything else.

Even with Germany it turned out that Angela Merkel did grave mistakes and Germans were able to find out about those only after she left office. Being continually in office gives you the ability to hide your trials. The longer you stay the easier it is for you to get elected.

That’s why it is very important to have a time limit in power.

Disagree. Presidency, like other elected positions, should not be a career. I want people who can serve with high dedication and then go back to private life. I'd like to see term limits on representatives and senators as well, and also an upper age limit.

There is nothing competent about Lula. It’s a populist “corrupticracy”.

I really can’t understand how Brazilians (that actually have a multi party system) keep having to choose between two awful candidates.

The entire republican tradition (with a small r) rests on the assumption that leadership is a common skill. The society is supposed to give ambitious young people opportunities to demonstrate their skills, and then select the most capable ones and give them increasingly challenging roles. At any given time, there should be an order of magnitude more potential leaders (with the necessary skills and experience) than what the society actually needs. And the leaders should be replaced often enough, to avoid giving them the idea that they are somehow special.

It’s a nice argument but there’s another axis: fatigue. Leading takes its toll. To be charitable it’s not plausible that you can run a country, with all the stress that entails, and out compete everyone not at the apex of the front line.

I check my brake pads every year. Eventually the incumbent pads lose out to some whipper-snapper from the new pads box. I might vote red again or I might switch to blue. It depends how muddy it is. Either way, it’s both a new/old choice as well as a red/blue choice.

Time-in-office is also a major contributor to corruption. Lukashenko has been winning the same election for 30+ years!

Switzerland rotates their President every year.

i feel like democracy isn't about the most competent but about the "least bad" option you could have. an effective dictator (lol) can cut thru the red tape but what people are worried about are the terrible ones. at least with a democracy you can rotate them out.

Is Trump and his administration most competent employees?

I would rather limit not amount of terms, but the age. Not eligible for any kind of elections if you are 60+, both as candidate and as voter.

Power corrupts.

Except when those employees also have command of armies, at which point history has shown that swapping them out before they get too comfortable is key for keeping a republic a republic.

I wish Australia had term limits for all politicians, and not just for the PM. Term limits prevents people becoming career politicians, which i think would be a good thing.

Mark Rutte, Netherlands, 14 years prime minister, four terms in office. It is hard to say if he represented the general will of the population given that his party, the liberal-right VVD favors the more well-to-do part of the population. I think many voters voted for him as a trustworthy face and friendly, amicable man. Vote for the personality. He was also characterized as Mr Tefal for his ability to make nothing stick to him in terms of criticism, and utterly pragmatic, denouncing vision. As a result the big problems and areas where reform were most needed, were always pushed to the future.

You might say he introduced a kind of populism, where politicians only care about the next election round and their reputation, to the cost of important decision-making and long-term thinking. Unfortunately this is kind of a working strategy, a weakness of democracy, where the current centre-right government is struggling with all the aggravated problems not dealt with in the past, and the voters think "well, perhaps we have to vote VVD again where these problems didn't exist", or vote more right-wing by populism that makes immigration the cause of all problems.

Yeah this is valuable context. He Jerry Brown'd it.

I do think term limits are good, but nonconsecutive 16 years is actually an ok limit IMHO. Maybe not the one I'd prefer for my government, but not necessarily objectively bad for democracy.

Term limits result in dynasties "behind the scenes" running things.

Long-term politicians result in "behind the scenes" doing the real work of running things.

Wait a minute ...

Let's do takes for the sake of takes.

Repeal the 22nd.

No electoral method is perfect and there are problems with Instant runoff ranked ballots. Look up "Favourite Betrayal" as a problem where ranking your most favourite incorrectly can accidentally result in your least favourite winning.

Of course just because there are technically flaws, doesn't mean it's not an improvement over the status quo.

Instant Runoff Ranked ballots are particularly well suited for electing a single position like a Mayor or President. Given that it's still a majoritarian system like First Pass the Post, it's a much more questionable system to use for other things like electing a parliament.

Depends on which ranked system. IRV has a lot of issues that other systems (like STAR, my personal preference in voting system, or Condorcet methods for instance) address much better. Non-monotonicity in particular seems like a bad property of a voting system, so I'm confused that IRV is so popular recently.

First past the post is beneficial for establishment parties.

Lula's been involved in over a dozen corruption scandals by now. It doesn't matter to anyone. It's been completely normalized.

> Even incontrovertible proof of wrong doing does not change their mindset

You could argue that about pretty much every politician and their supporters in India. The right wing keeps winning because the left refuses to address the fears of a majority of the Indian population. Even if those fears are unwarranted - dismissing them as "uneducated" and "blind sheep" alienates people even more.

I wouldn’t say deadlocked but the coalition between moderates and the left isn’t a given. There are many centrist parties who will likely alternate between supporting and opposing the government depending on the issue.

Legislative branch in Brazil never deadlocks. Coalitions are a very natural part of our democracy.

Senate is very right wing.

Big issue is that there are no swings between crazy left and crazy right.

There is crazy right and significantly more normal left.

> he heaves his hand when it comes to (mostly populist) spending, like there's no tomorrow

This is key to his reelection. He literally ran on a "Bolsonaro will end Bolsa Família" campaign.

It's unfortunate. Lula inherited a post-Washington consensus neoliberal Brazil. He had nearly 20 years to undo all that and reindustrialize the country, thereby putting us on China's path.

I would have voted for him regardless of ideology if he had done it, but he didn't. It's just easier to just anesthetize the population and put them on paliative care with free money.

> he thinks he is helping the poor, but it is just for short term.

This "short term" is unbearably long... But I do see signs that the system is reaching its limits. Government was already having trouble paying pensions before Vorcaro.

> so much public debt, in a few years everyone, rich or poor, will have pay the price, with interest.

Bankers love Lula for a reason. Record profits.

Delivering material benefits requires fiscal health, something Brazil lacks: https://tradingeconomics.com/brazil/government-debt-to-gdp

Nobody wants to see them cut taxes from the rich or reduce employers rights. The popular "right" in Brazil wants taxes to be easier to pay, judges not to decide based on who is asking, and clear rules on what you can or can't do.

Also, nobody can beat Dilma on cutting taxes from the rich.

Bolsonaro was also friendly towards Russia. Any president will be. Brazil depends on their fertilizers.

I get that BRICS is world-domination wise scary to the US, but I don't really think the rest of the world fears that sans the US's warmongering.

I don't know enough about their available options to know how bad this is.

Are you taking this single congressman's word as fact?

Only if you beat the fascists. Otherwise it gets real black-and-white real fast

The US is going to need a constitutional amendment to undo the Citizens United decision. Unlimited money in politics is anything but free speech.

No.

No, this much money in politics is still very dangerous.

A major reason it isn't working for now is because Donald Trump is, in addition to being a corrupt autocrat, incredibly incompetent. We shouldn't have to rely on that next time.

Absolutely the fuck not.

Nope. Money still buys votes. It's just that Musk is so opaquely unpopular outside of the US that it negates his riches. Which really says something.

Not really. A biased coin doesn't need to be biased 99% (to 1%) for it to matter.

gerrymandering is not possible with Brasil electoral system

>gerrymandering

I don't know the specifics of Brazil's system, but at least in the US gerrymandering has nothing to do with the Presidency or Senate, only the House. It's also not without risk. Gerrymandering is bad, but it doesn't change the totals of votes; it attempts to reapportion "excess" votes yielding a large win margin in one area to give winning, but necessarily smaller, margins in more areas. Amongst other challenges though that smaller margin means if there is a wave then a gerrymander can turn into a "dummymander" where previously safe districts get flipped.

>funny business

This is actually pretty dang hard in anything but a total sham, and even then is at least obvious it happened. Some timy fiddling at the margins may be possible to sneak through, and yeah some elections that might make the difference. But that can't counter any serious victory. The more common technique seems to be trying to suppress the vote. But as well as also not being trivial it also too risks backfiring by motivating people much harder. There is a lot of human psychology around "loss", people often absolutely hate things being taken from them even if they were complacent about having them.

Gerrymandering doesn’t change the fact that the voters decide the results. Most electoral systems already give unequal weight to different votes based on district sizes etc., so gerrymandering is only a change of degree and intention, not of how democracy fundamentally works.

Yes, please say more, I have no idea what you're saying.

Wait, what did he do besides be happy that a fascist isn't in charge of the future of the Amazon?

Serious question: why would he be "heavily" quoted in physics books? I didn't think he was a physicist, is he?

You’re making the claim. Back it up.

Not really. He had a really good PR person that made people think this, but most technologists are focused on, y’know, actual technology

no

In current times only cowards and deadbeats are non partisan.

Buddy, ICE is chasing down and killing US citizens. Musk is openly supporting European neo-Nazis. The US tech sector is supporting the genocide of Palestinians, and interfering with foreign elections.

Anglo-American media spend the 2000s and 2010s accusing Denmark of being fascist.

The word is absolutely meaningless now.

A shocking number of people aren't against fascism, as long as you don't use the actual word to describe what they support.

And when you correctly use the word to describe what they are supporting, you are inciting violence.

Usually laws are based on some kind of observable reality.

20% happens about 1 in 5 times. I know that's snarky wording but 20% shots come though constantly in daily life.

I think as humans we are really bad at intuition about probabilities, and it being an election only makes it much worse. I don't think anyone is consciously conflating these with poll numbers but percentages of voters are the numbers we see a lot more than prediction markets, and 80% is idunno an 80% chance of getting between 50% and 54% of the vote or something.

If he has an 80% chance to win that means Polymarket will be "wrong" 20% of the time. And 80% seems fair given he was leading in the polls by a razor thin but consistent margin.

They were never useful for the results, just for market expectation, which is never the same as real chances of something happening

Maybe it's useful for people spending money to present the odds they wish for?

They are good at some markets but they don’t understand latam and especially Brazilian politics in the least so whatever makes it into the US news drives the market although it is normally wrong

and more manipulated for intended public influence than realized

this kind of gambling ought be made illegal along with the explicit in-pocket gambling

want to gamble, go to a physical place,

constant, easy access apps are already showing harm

What do you get out of posting on HN that you want to destroy your country?

Everything was fine when Jair Bolsonaro won, and even during the first round of this election. The logic here is crazy!

Busses with a Lula insignia on it? That's an electoral crime, and probably why they were stopped from circulating. Just yet another one to the list.

They called for extension back in 2022 too, and it was ruled illegal. "Everybody had the chance to vote", said Alexandre de Moraes.

Abstainees were thought to be the biggest source of new votes for Lula in the 2nd round of elections. I think such a move benefited Lula far more than it did Flávio.

It's also inconsistent with the court's own precedent. Extending voting hours was deemed illegal back in 2022. "Everybody had the chance to vote", said Alexandre de Moraes.

After Lula lost in the 1st round, suddenly it became legal again. The irony is not lost on me. That's the pattern with the leftist judges in the courts. The supreme court judge who decided it used to be Lula's own lawyer.

Back in 2022, Lula's party used to be against Bolsonaro's "digital militias". They engaged everybody they had in the superior and supreme courts in order to censor it all. It was disgusting.

This time around, some guy in Lula's party created "Lula's Army", a channel with millions of people in it. Suddenly, it was fine.

They used to cry about "fake news" and call for censorship at every opportunity, and they'd get it because they own the courts. Now they were the ones spreading "fake news" of all sorts. Did they get censored? Nah.

Censorship in Brazil is unconstitutional, by the way. Political censorship is doubly so. It doesn't matter, because they own the supreme court.

There are no laws in Brazil, there is only what the supreme court wants. Whatever they write on a piece of paper becomes law, and police obeys it. They are the true seat of power in this country.

I'm kinda trying to move past left/right labels. I'll try to explain.

Bolsonaro generally supports privatizing Brazilian state companies and selling them off to foreigners. I don't want that. Especially not to the US and Israel.

Lula on the other hand is better aligned with China, which is also what I want.

Lula and myself are aligned on these two points. So this outcome is not entirely bad for me.

The problem I have with Lula is his party's obnoxious taxation, lack of a real plan for reindustrialization, continuous defense of criminals, and most importantly, his total domination of the supreme court. I voted for the right specifically to see those judges impeached and imprisoned, because I absolutely oppose everything they did in 2022, far more than I ever opposed Lula himself. I'm of the opinion that presidents and elections barely matter anymore, because it's the supreme court that runs the country. It's the Venezuela governance model: president appoints god-like supreme court judges and rules monocratically through them.

The 1st round this month was such an upset not because of Bolsonaro but because of the senate. They are the ones who can impeach supreme court judges, and when Brazil unexpectedly elected a right wing majority in the senate, it struck true fear into the court. This was our chance to completely wipe out that court and forever change the history of this country, like Bukele did for El Salvador.

While in the end the necessary victory didn't materialize, Brazilian senate is still absolute majority right wing now, and they could still impeach those judges. I'm not going to hold out hope for that anymore, but if I see at least one judge bite the dust I'll still call it a major win.

I was just linking it for completeness. My submission was flagged, but this one wasn't. Guidelines don't explain the difference.

Yeah, I agree completely. I didn't vote for any of these candidates, I voted to impeach the supreme court.

There is exactly one politician that once upon a time represented me: Dr. Enéas Carneiro. Ironically, his ideas were closest to the Chinese Communist Party. He's dead now.

The left wing has PCO, a real left wing party, and I agree with them on a daily basis. They're shunned by everyone, and were even persecuted by the supreme court along with the right wing.

I'm increasingly resigned to the idea that immigration is the only option by now.

Bolsonaro-aligned mayors deliberately blocked busses from running that would take people to the polls in Lula-supporting neighborhoods. Emergency legal decisions allowed voting times to extend as a response to this. By the margin of votes, it wouldn't have mattered.

> Lula was allowed to do every "electoral crime" they barred Bolsonaro from doing in 2022. They even extended voting time, a move that directly benefiting him, and also ruled illegal back in 2022.

I don't get it. Are you agreeing with me?

Both candidates agreed to it. Please stop.

Yeah it’s alarming how much HN users are willing to support corruption so long as it’s their preferred candidate doing it. Really is all just tribalism to most posters in this thread so far