BOLSANORO. Jair Bolsonaro has admitted defeat in Brazil’s presidential election, after a historic vote for the incumbent.
[Mis à jour le 2 novembre 2022 à 8h27] He therefore waited nearly 48 hours before speaking, raising fears for the worst in Brazil. Finally, Jair Bolsonaro announced that he accepted his defeat in the presidential election, marking Lula’s return to power on Tuesday, November 1, 2022. After four years in power, the far-right head of state will therefore give way since he assured that he was committed to “respecting the Constitution.” Thus, the Brazilian leader will not contest the results, as was feared. However, he did not address a single word of congratulations to his opponent. But the transfer of power is well and truly launched between the two men. “By ordering the beginning of the transition, [le président] recognized the final result of the election,” said the Brazilian Supreme Court, the equivalent of the French Constitutional Council.
During this speech from the presidential palace located in Brasilia, the capital, in the center of the country, Jair Bolsonaro also called for an end to the roadblocks formed by supporters of the outgoing president in many places in the country, as a sign of protest. results. But the movement, if it disrupted hundreds of roads in the country, did not degenerate into a coup, as might have been feared before the announcement of the results. The Bolsonaro page will therefore now be shot in the fifth largest country in the world. His succession should be officially recorded on January 1, 2023, after this historic result.
What result for Jair Bolsonaro in the presidential election of Brazil?
According to the final results communicated by the Brazilian Superior Electoral Tribunal, Jair Bolsonaro won 49.10% of the vote, or 58,148,089 votes, against 50.90% for his opponent and now successor, Lula, in the second round of the election. Brazilian presidential 2022, October 30. In the 1st round, he had already arrived behind Lula, winning 43.20% of the vote (51,072,345 votes).
Why is Jair Bolsonaro’s result in Brazil’s 2022 presidential election historic?
The outcome of this second round of the Brazilian presidential election has a historic dimension in several respects for Jair Bolsonaro. First of all, this is an election in which the outgoing president won a historically high number of votes – more than 58 million -, more than in 2018, when he was crowned (an additional 400,000) . An observation already shared at the end of the first round (1.8 million more votes). Figures never reached by the far right in the country, which therefore rose to the second round twice consecutively.
The historical dimension also takes on its meaning in the tiny gap, across the country, which separates Jair Bolsonaro from his opponent, Lula. 2.1 million votes out of a college of 118.5 million voters who cast a vote on October 30. In 2018, Bolsonaro won with 10 million votes in advance. Only the election of Dilma Rousseff in 2014 was tight, the left-wing candidate having won with 3.4 million additional ballots in her name. Proof of the political polarization of a country that appears split in two: the gap between Lula and Bolsonaro was only 1.80%.
But with this defeat, as close as it is, Jair Bolsonaro also has history in this Brazilian presidential election of 2022 by becoming the first incumbent president candidate for his succession to fail to be re-elected. Before him, Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1994 and 1998), Lula (2002, 2006) and Dilma Rousseff (2010, 2014) managed to keep their jobs.