São Paulo loss caps dismal local elections for Brazil’s Lula

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The incumbent rightwing mayor of São Paulo cruised to victory in local elections in Brazil on Sunday, capping a dismal performance in municipal polls by leftwing parties and candidates backed by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Ricardo Nunes, mayor since 2021 of the western hemisphere’s largest city, won about 60 per cent of the vote in the run-off against Guilherme Boulos, a leftwing lawmaker seen as a protégé of Lula.

Pablo Marçal, a populist outsider who stoked controversy early on by insulting his opponents, was narrowly eliminated in a first round of voting earlier this month.

Nunes’s victory in Brazil’s commercial and financial capital is a stinging blow to Lula, whose Workers’ party won mayoral races in only one of Brazil’s 26 state capitals — Fortaleza — and in none of the larger cities, such as Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte or Porto Alegre.

The broad success of right and centre-right parties underlines Brazil’s growing conservative tilt and the dwindling appeal of traditional leftwing parties, such as the Workers’ party which has its roots in the union activism of the 1980s.

The results also threaten Lula’s re-election prospects because they reduce his influence over local power centres, which are critical to mobilising votes and running campaigns.

The 78-year-old president, who took office for a third non-consecutive term at the beginning of last year, has suggested he would like to run in the next presidential cycle in 2026 for another four-year term.

His popularity since returning to office has by and large remained stable. According to a poll this month by Datafolha, 36 per cent of Brazilians consider his administration to be “good or great”, while 32 per cent say it is “bad or terrible.” Another 29 per cent say it is just “regular”.

“Lula’s government has been just average. A lot of promises and little action. I don’t trust him or any politician. It’s not a question of right or left, it’s everyone,” said Milton, a 71-year-old who works in a news kiosk in the east zone of São Paulo.

The local elections, which elect mayors and city councils for more than 5,000 municipalities, “have a national impact because [they] reorganise the political scenario,” said Rafael Cortez from consultancy Tendências.

“What stands out this time is a trend, especially in state capitals, of a strengthening of the centre-right. This is a challenge for the left, which will now operate in a more difficult environment,” he said.

For many observers, the polls were a victory for a bloc of parties known as the Centrão, an amorphous group that eschews ideology and focuses on obtaining resources to build their electoral machines. As a result, the bloc is often effective at local level.

In the first round alone earlier this month, Centrão parties — including the Social Democratic party, Brazil Union, the Progressives and Nunes’s Brazilian Democratic Movement — won more than 3,000 mayoral races or more than half of the country.