Brazilians Vote In Crucial Runoff Election Between Lula And Bolsonaro In Key Test For ‘Donroe Doctrine’

Millions of Brazilian voters are heading to the polls on Sunday to choose their future president. The two candidates are incumbent left-wing President Lula of the Brazilian Worker's Party and the right-wing Liberal Party candidate Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

Sunday's election is a runoff election between the two candidates who secured the most votes in the first round election, held on October 4. Bolsonaro secured 47.03 percent of votes to Lula's 45.16 percent. Given that neither candidate secured above 50 percent of valid ballots, the election went to a second-round runoff to decide the victor.

According to the BBC's poll tracker for the 2026 Brazilian elections, Bolsonaro maintains a narrow lead going in to Sunday's vote, with poll averages on Saturday putting the right-wing candidate at 48 percent to Lula's 46 percent.

A Bolsonaro victory would represent a major boost to the foreign policy goals of President Donald Trump, whose administration has made strategic dominance over the Americas, formally named the "Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine" in the 2025 National Security Strategy and informally known as the "Donroe Doctrine", a key foreign policy objective.

The Monroe Doctrine is a 19th-century-era U.S. foreign policy which promoted Washington's hemispheric dominance over the Americas to the exclusion of other foreign actors, in particular the European colonial powers.

Under the "Donroe Doctrine" the same exclusive philosophy is applied to adversarial countries like China, which has expanded its strategic influence in Latin America in recent years.

The doctrine has proven successful so far; pro-Trump candidates in Latin America have won a string of recent elections in Colombia, Argentina, Honduras, Chile, Costa Rica and elsewhere.

Bolsonaro is vocally pro-Trump, and has vowed that his administration would align itself closely with Trump's on a range of issues; Bolsonaro has said that he would make Brazil a member of the U.S.-led "Shield Of The Americas" alliance, an initiative which claims to combat transnational drug cartels, illegal immigration and organized crime in the region.

Critics of the alliance say that it solidifies U.S. hegemony over Latin America and legitimizes U.S. interventionism, thereby weakening the individual members' sovereignty.

Lula, on the other hand, has been a vocal critic of Trump's on various issues, warning the president not to interfere in Latin American elections, decrying Trump's proposal to charge commercial vessels a fee to cross the Strait of Hormuz as "piracy," and attacking the Trump administration's imposition of tariffs on Brazilian goods (the U.S. currently maintains a tariff of 25 percent on most Brazilian imports).

Lula says that, if he is re-elected, his administration will protect Brazilian sovereignty from perceived U.S. overreach.