It’s the season of elections, and the argument hasn’t moved since the Second World War: the populist right versus the populist left, with the formation of modern idiocracies or just the continuity of the status quo. Some of the key polls have counted; others are still to come. In this order of ideas, let’s talk about what happened in Brazil and Israel. Then, we’ll play our Nostradamus card with the United States’ and Spain’s elections.
On October 25, Brazil kept Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brasília with 51.79% against Flávio Bolsonaro’s 48.21%. Flávio’s slogan was “O Brasil vai vencer”, Brazil will win. It did, and he left. He refused to recognize the result, let a Supreme Court deadline to surrender his passports expire, and that night crossed into Argentina with his family to board a charter flight. The order came in a money-laundering probe. Corruption runs in the family’s blood. Jair flew to Florida after losing in 2022 and is now serving 27 years for plotting a coup. Eduardo, convicted in absentia in June, had told his brother to leave if he lost. Lula’s fourth term will still be hard: the Bolsonaros’ PL won the largest bench in both houses. The stock markets took it personally with a direct downfall. On Monday the Ibovespa fell 13.88%, its worst day since the pandemic. Investors had bet on Bolsonaro, but as what happened, they’ll have to look to other puppets to keep steady their greedy vessels.
Yesterday, Israel held its first election since the dark October 7. AI was a lead actor: Open University researchers counted more than 1,800 AI posts from Likud alone. One, shared by Netanyahu, showed his rival Gadi Eisenkot running past a figure resembling his son, killed in Gaza, to embrace the Arab politician Mansour Abbas. Likud billboards read “The Right or Palestine”. Ben Gvir’s read “Ben Gvir is strong, Israel is strong”, over Palestinian prisoners kneeling in cuffs. It didn’t deliver for the Greater Israel camp. With three quarters counted, the bloc of Likud, Shas, United Torah Judaism, Otzma Yehudit and Religious Zionism has 54 of the 61 seats it needs. The opposition has 47; Arab-led lists 19. Netanyahu, on trial since 2020 for bribery, fraud and breach of trust, now needs seven seats from people he spent the campaign insulting. If everyone fails, which takes about three months, Israel votes again and the AI starts over.
More than 50,000 Israelis abroad were expected to fly in to vote, many hoping to vote Netanyahu out. The transport ministry reportedly looked at limiting charter flights in case they did. But change won’t come this round. Palestinians will go on living under settlement and its violence; the UN says settler attacks hit an all-time high this year. The right lost seats, not the argument. Netanyahu still claimed “a clear, decisive majority among the Zionist public”, a count that skips the 19 Arab-led seats. It was a campaign built on bigotry, and it nearly worked. When the Israel Democracy Institute asked voters what would decide their vote, the security and economy came first. The Palestinian genocide, past 74,000 by the territory’s health ministry, was not in the top four.
On November 3, the Disunited States finally holds its midterms. The world has been hearing about them since January, and most of us are tired of the rallies and the polls. Democrats need a net gain of four Senate seats and three House seats to take Congress. Trump knows the stakes. If Republicans lose, he told House Republicans in January, “I’ll get impeached.” So his promises, as ever, come from outside the box.
If Republicans keep both houses, every adult citizen gets $5,000, the “Trump dividend”. It would cost about $1.2 trillion and needs Congress. The family fortune, around $10 billion by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, would cover one adult in 120. If Republicans win, the Department of War will put $100 million into a drug factory in Kentucky. The war, presumably, is on drugs. If Republicans win, the Department of Justice, or what is left of it after 3,300 of its lawyers left, will settle the claims of veterans sickened by the water at Camp Lejeune. Then, in Greenville, the promise became a threat: “If we don’t win, there’s no money.” It’s the negotiating position of a toddler.
Spain closes the set on November 29. The Socialists couldn’t contain two crises: the summer surge into Ceuta, an estimated 60,000 people from Morocco wanted to visit the city. They stayed three days and went back home with a major migrant and diplomatic crisis. Later, national housing protests burst after an 87-year-old woman was evicted in Madrid. Pedro Sánchez was worn out by his endless battles with the PP and Vox, whose deputy told Congress that Francoism was “a stage of progress”. When the right and Junts voted down his housing decrees, he called a snap election.
The Senate race will be tight. On October 26 the PP and Vox signed a pact to share it, standing aside for each other in nine provinces. Every seat projection puts the pair above the 176 seats needed for a majority in Congress. That gives the right and the far-right an open field for a nationalist program: a Senate that Vox’s 2019 program proposed closing and that its pact now claims to protect, an income tax of two rates, 15 and 25 percent, and above all “remigration," which, in Vox’s own words, covers any immigrant, legal or not, who decides “not to integrate into the national culture”.
The end of 2026 looks like a soap-opera. The villain keeps striking, and the hero cannot fight back because his own entourage is under investigation too. That’s the democratic world. Nobody campaigns on factual ideas. They campaign on cash and fear, dragging last century’s ideologies behind them, with nothing to say about how fractured we’ve become. In a dramedy, at least, the villain stays for the next season.
Want to explore more visit Samsara News!
