On Oct. 28, Brazil’s dramatic campaign season came to an equally dramatic end: Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right populist, won the runoff election to become the country’s next president. Although polling over the summer had indicated that more than half of Brazilians would never vote for him, in the end, 55 percent of voters did. Bolsonaro’s Social Liberal Party also made huge gains. In the lower house of the National Congress, it went from eight representative to 52 (out of 513 total). And in the upper house, where the party has never held a seat, it won four. Bolsonaro will interpret this showing as a strong mandate to pursue his campaign promises, which include giving the military more say in government, ending restrictions on gun ownership, rolling back environmental protections, reining in the media, and draining the swamp in Brasília.
Wondering what all this means for Brazil’s democracy? We’ve collected Foreign Policy’s best articles on Bolsonaro’s victory and where he’ll go from here.
