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5 min readJames Bosworth on What Comes After Lula's Stunning Win
"Flavio was a terrible candidate, and the other was that Lula was a great candidate." That's how James Bosworth, a non-resident fellow at the Stimson Center and author of the Latin America Risk Report, sums up the surprise result in Brazil's presidential election. The prediction markets had Bolsonaro at 80% to win. Bosworth himself gave him 64% the night before. But Lula won by 4 million votes, and the story of how that happened reveals something important about how two-round elections work—and about what comes next for Latin American politics.
How Lula Won From Behind
The key mechanism, Bosworth explains, is that the first round and the second round are fundamentally different elections. In the first round, voters cast ballots as a referendum on the incumbent. Lula sat at 45% in the polls, and the election was about him. When Bolsonaro came in first, "all of a sudden all of the attention got put on him." The second round became a referendum on Bolsonaro—and his baggage was enormous.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (04:43) **Why Lula Won: A Terrible Opponent and a Smarter Campaign** - James Bosworth gives the two-part answer: Flavio Bolsonaro was a terrible candidate weighed down by his family's scandals, and Lula ran a vastly improved second-round campaign.
- 2 (08:52) **Prediction Markets and Pollsters Missed Big** - Bosworth explains why his own model and the prediction markets (which had Bolsonaro at 80%+) were overconfident, and how a tiny turnout shift flipped the result.
- 3 (10:41) **The Michelle Bolsonaro Spat and Party Fracturing** - A family feud between Flavio and his stepmother Michelle hurt him with women voters, and the party is already planning to ditch the Bolsonaro name for 2030.
- 4 (15:47) **The Evangelical-Catholic Political Divide in Brazil** - Bosworth explains the structural driver of the evangelical surge and how it has split the electorate, with evangelicals voting heavily for Bolsonaro and Catholics for Lula.
- 5 (18:07) **Has the "Orange Wave" Crested?** - Bosworth argues that while pro-Trump leaders have won recently, the real dynamic is an anti-incumbent pendulum, and every Latin American leader—including Lula—must still respond to Trump for the next two years.
- 6 (21:10) **Venezuela's Election Timeline: Rubio vs. Delcy Rodriguez** - Bosworth lays out the competing timelines for a potential Venezuelan election, with Rubio pushing for July 2025 and Maduro's successor wanting to delay until 2028-2029.
- 7 (22:49) **Lula's Complicated Role in Venezuela** - Bosworth explains the strange diplomacy: Lula was too friendly with Maduro, but now Delcy Rodriguez is chummy with Trump, which may give Lula space to become an advocate for Venezuelan elections.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
When we last talked to James Bosworth, it seemed like an “orange wave” was going to take over Latin America and further realign the region’s interests with those of the Trump administration. But with Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s surprise victory in Brazil’s presidential election last month, and opposition leader María Corina Machado’s return to Venezuela, it now looks like the orange wave might be cresting. Bosworth — a non-resident fellow at the Stimson Center and the author of the Latin America Risk Report newsletter — comes back to the show to explain how Lula pulled off his upset win over Flavio Bolsonaro, the impact of Machado’s return to Venezuela, and why 2027 might further reshape the politics of Latin America.
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