The Brazilian citizens once again elected left-leaning Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to take the reins over Latin America’s largest economy as its next president.

Following Lula’s win, Brazil’s currency and stocks had a volatile morning on Oct. 31 with investors bracing for a choppy week ahead. In particular, fears of more interventionist policies and no support for privatization sank shares of state-controlled companies such as oil company Petrobras, which fell around 8%, according to a Reuters report.

Brazil is home to the largest land mass in Latin America and blessed with both natural gas and crude oil. Offshore, production from the country’s pre-salt formation continues to rise and could assist the country to potentially double production to around 6 million bbl/day in the future, according to details revealed by Brazil’s Oil Ministry.

Lula won the election with 60.3 million or 50.9% of the votes compared to his opponent and Brazil’s actual President Jair Bolsonaro who garnered just 58.2 million or 49.1% of the votes, Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court (TSE) reported Oct. 31 in a statement on its website.

“We have reached the end of one of the most important elections in our history. An election that put two opposing projects face to face, and that today has a single and great winner: the Brazilian people,” Lula announced during an election victory speech on Oct. 30, later published on his official website.

“This is not a victory for me, nor for the [Workers Party], nor for the parties that supported me in this campaign,” Lula said. “It is the victory of an immense democratic movement that was formed, above political parties, personal interests and ideologies, so that democracy would win.”

Lula’s victory is by the tightest margin since Brazil’s return to democratic elections in 1989, The Economist reported on Oct. 31. It’s also the first time that an incumbent has failed to win re-election in the South American country, the magazine reported.

Brazil has about 156.5 million registered voters and 94,028 polling stations, according to details revealed by the Virginia-based International Foundation for Electoral Systems last month in an extensive report on elections in Brazil.

This year “Brazilians elected their next president and the majority of their elected representatives at the state and federal levels and given the scale of the elections, the results will heavily influence the direction of the world’s fifth-largest nation for the next four years and beyond,” the IFES said in its report.

Leaders Congratulating Lula

Presidents from near and far have already congratulated Lula on his victory including Ecuador’s Guillermo Lasso and left-leaning leaders from Chile’s Gabriel Boric Font and Mexico's Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro.

From much further away the congratulations continue to roll in. U.S. President Joe Biden was one of the first world leaders to comment on Lula’s victory.

“I send my congratulations to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on his election to be the next president of Brazil following free, fair, and credible elections,” Biden said Oct. 30 in a statement posted by The White House. “I look forward to working together to continue the cooperation between our two countries in the months and years ahead.”

Across the pond other leaders have also already congratulated Lula including EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the U.K.’s new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and German Chancellor Bundeskanzler Olaf Scholz.

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