Tim´s thread is so good, that I´ve tidied it up so it can be read as an article. There are many lessons here for the left in Spain. Vox/PP are best beaten by forcing a clear choice, mobilising the anti-right vote early, and exposing any lack of coherence or hidden dependence on the hard right before the campaign hardens. It is no surprise that a football correspondent can deliver a better analysis than the foreign correspondents hanging out in the São Paulo Press Club. Football correspondents love their adopted country and know every inch of it. @sidlowe is the best writer in the English language on ANYTHING to do with Spain. How Lula Beat Bolsonaro’s Heir: Brazil’s Election Explained "Brazil’s presidential election was supposed to be a straightforward contest between continuity and change. Instead, it exposed the limits of polling, the weakness of Jair Bolsonaro’s political inheritance, and the scale of the anti-Bolsonaro coalition that formed almost at the last moment. On the night of the first round, one question kept coming up: could Flávio Bolsonaro’s lead be overturned in the runoff? The answer was simple enough. Mathematically, it would be difficult. Politically, it was still possible. And that distinction mattered. At that stage, there had effectively been no real campaign against him. Bolsonaro’s son had been treated by much of the left as such an obviously poor candidate that he had barely been stress-tested. The assumption seemed to be that once the second round arrived, his weaknesses would speak for themselves. That turned out to be partly true — but only after the opposition finally organized. What happened next was one of the striking features of the campaign. The left mobilized on a scale that surprised even seasoned observers. It put millions of people on the streets and did something else that proved just as important: it learned how to campaign effectively on social media. That digital effort, combined with old-fashioned ground organization, helped drive turnout and widen Lula’s reach. One of the most visible signs of that mobilization was the participation of older voters, often brought to polling stations by their grandchildren. In a country where older citizens are not obliged to vote, their turnout was politically meaningful. The decisive factor, however, was not simply that Lula’s side improved. It was that Flávio Bolsonaro was revealed to be a deeply flawed candidate. The first weakness was corruption. Bolsonaro’s camp had hoped to run on anti-corruption rhetoric, but that line was hard to sustain once scrutiny intensified. Allegations and associations around business dealings undermined the image of clean politics the family wanted to project. The second weakness was even more damaging: ties to militia networks and rogue law-and-order figures. Bolsonaro-style politics has always relied heavily on a hardline public security message, but in Brazil that comes with a dark underside. The campaign’s associations with violent actors and informal power structures made it easier for opponents to frame Bolsonaroism not as order, but as impunity. The Ana Clara case became especially toxic. Flávio Bolsonaro had taken time away from politics to defend, free of charge, a police officer accused of murdering a five-year-old girl, Ana Clara. In the final televised debate, the child’s mother was in the audience. Flávio attempted to justify his actions and even addressed the mother directly, but in doing so he made a catastrophic mistake: he referred to her as “Ana Clara,” the name of the dead child. The mother’s anguished response — “She’s dead!” — turned the exchange into a public humiliation. It crystallized the impression that Bolsonaro was not just politically weak, but morally careless. Then there was the issue of coherence. Bolsonaro’s economic messaging never really held together. He proposed sweeping spending cuts, while simultaneously promising major investment and saying he would preserve — and even expand — Lula’s social programs, which his political family had long opposed. It sounded less like a plan than a bundle of contradictions stitched together to appeal to everyone at once. The effect was not moderate pragmatism; it was insincerity. Flávio Bolsonaro also tried to sell himself as the polished, modern version of the Bolsonaro family — the Bolsonaro who had taken the vaccine, in his own words, the less abrasive, more presentable heir. For a while, that image worked. But it made the eventual collapse worse, because once the mask slipped, there was no stable core beneath it. That was evident in the final debate, when he mocked Lula for having nine fingers. The remark is common in the hard right, but it is not meant for public consumption. Lula lost part of a finger in an industrial accident when he was young and working a night shift. The insult allowed Lula, who is not especially strong in debate, to have his best moment. He responded indignantly by contrasting his own working-class rise to the presidency with Bolsonaro’s more privileged background and thinner political record. It may well have been the moment that decided the election. Bolsonaro later apologized, but the damage was already done. The traditional right also played a crucial role in the result. The biggest loser in the first round was not the left but the conventional right, which had been eaten up by Bolsonaro’s party. That left a broader conservative electorate facing a difficult choice. Some prominent figures, especially those with government experience, were repelled by the authoritarian drift of Bolsonaroism. Others made a colder calculation: a Flávio victory might produce a new dynasty, especially after comments from his economic team suggesting there might be no elections for the next eight years. For many on the traditional right, the alternative — four more years of Lula followed by an open field without a Bolsonaro heir — looked preferable. That helps explain the unusually low number of spoiled ballots. Many voters from the traditional right appear to have voted against Flávio rather than for Lula. They were joined by other sectors of society, including prominent public health figures and older voters alarmed by what Bolsonaro represented for the health system and democratic institutions. The rejection of Bolsonaro was crucial because it revealed something polls had failed to capture properly: the depth of unease with the movement, especially at its extremes. Bolsonaro himself had once described some supporters as “a band of crazies,” and the campaign supplied ample evidence of that fear. Whether it was demonstrators carrying a plastic missile emblazoned with “Trump Nuke Brazil,” or supporters posing with grotesque racial imagery, the rhetoric and symbolism around Bolsonaroism were often unsettling. That made it hard for a candidate like Flávio to expand beyond the already committed base. So why did the polls get it wrong? Probably for two reasons. First, the movement away from Bolsonaro came late. Second, after underestimating the right in earlier rounds, pollsters may have overcorrected. By election day, the mood on the street had shifted clearly. Anecdotes are not data, but in many neighborhoods the visual balance was striking: far more Lula stickers than Bolsonaro ones, and a sense that enthusiasm for the incumbent camp was thin at best. That may be the biggest lesson of all. There was never a great wave of enthusiasm for Flávio Bolsonaro. Unlike his father, he did not inspire a messianic following. A victory would have left him in a powerful position, backed by Congress and with the possibility of reshaping the judiciary. Many Brazilians did not want that. The result will not end the tension. There will be protests, and Bolsonaro’s camp will try to stir trouble. But the election showed that the coalition against him was broader than many expected — and that, in the end, his political inheritance was much weaker than it first appeared.