SÃO PAULO – Lula did it again.

Brazil's 80-year-old leftist icon stormed back from a first-round deficit Sunday to seize a fourth term, taking 51.79% of the vote and crushing right-wing Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro's bid to drag his family's name back into the presidential palace.

"Long live democracy," Lula told roaring crowds in São Paulo, branding his victory a "loss for negativity, lies."

The win makes him the first Brazilian in history to be elected four times, and the first president since the country returned to civilian rule in 1985 to win a runoff after losing the opening round. He turns 81 on Tuesday and takes office on 5 January for a term running to 2030.

For Bolsonaro's camp, it was a gut punch of a night.

Bolsonaro's son won't concede

Flávio Bolsonaro – the son of convicted former president Jair Bolsonaro – has so far refused to recognise the result and demanded it be annulled, calling the outcome "inexplicable" as he stood poised to give a victory speech.

If that sounds familiar, it should: his father pulled the exact same play after losing to Lula in 2022, and is now serving a 27-year prison sentence for plotting a coup over it.

The younger Bolsonaro's complaint centres on an unprecedented move by Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin to extend voting nationwide by two hours – with some of his supporters crying bias because Zanin once worked as Lula's personal lawyer.

There's just one problem with that theory: both campaigns actually asked for the extension. Lula's team argued voters in São Paulo and Bahia were stranded by a lack of buses, while Bolsonaro's camp cited heavy rain hammering the south and São Paulo.

And the man who officially confirmed Lula's win is Supreme Electoral Court president Kássio Nunes Marques – a judge appointed by Jair Bolsonaro himself – who said the extension did not change the outcome of the race.

Then there's the margin: 4.4 million votes. That's a gap that makes any challenge dead on arrival.

'Best of any president'

The result stunned Brazil's right after Flávio Bolsonaro won the first round on 4 October with 47% to Lula's 45%.

The difference in round two was turnout. Lula's campaign threw everything into dragging voters to the polls after 33 million Brazilians sat out round one – and Sunday delivered the biggest drop in abstention between two rounds of a presidential election since 1989.

"This, my fourth term, will be the best of any president in the history of this country," the former metal worker told supporters in the street. "It will be the one in which I listen most to the Brazilian people."

"You, for the second time, have saved Brazilian democracy."

— Vice-President Geraldo Alckmin to Lula

Markets in freefall

Investors didn't celebrate.

The São Paulo stock exchange opened 15% down, triggering a brief suspension before it clawed back some ground, while interest rate futures jumped as traders tore through Lula's fiscal plans.

As desconsolate Bolsonaro supporters filed out of the Brasília house where their candidate had been watching the count, Lula was in São Paulo taking a victory lap.

'Nobody's backyard'

President Trump has yet to react to the result – but Lula used his speech to fire an early shot across Washington's bow.

Rejecting what Trump has dubbed the "Donroe Doctrine" – the push for US dominance in the Western Hemisphere – Lula declared Brazil "will not accept being anyone's backyard."

Trump has publicly backed the jailed Jair Bolsonaro, and Flávio Bolsonaro met him at the White House earlier this year to court his support.

Lula has also bucked a widening rightward swing across Latin America, where voters in Argentina, Chile and Colombia have handed power to right-wing parties.

World leaders lined up to congratulate him anyway. Mexico's left-wing President Claudia Sheinbaum posted: "The people of Brazil won." Peru's right-wing President Keiko Fujimori praised Brazil's "democratic day," with similar messages from Chile and Ecuador.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said the two countries had already "flourished under our partnership," while European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen declared that "democracy and multilateralism" had won. Spain's Pedro Sánchez called it a "great victory," French President Emmanuel Macron urged the two nations to work "in service of a more just world," and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa hailed a win for the "global south and progressive forces throughout the world."

Rocky road ahead

Lula's prize comes with landmines: a bitterly divided country, a hostile Congress stuffed with Bolsonaro allies, and a US president who has thrown his weight behind the man Lula just beat.