Brazil ex-President Bolsonaro wins big without his name on the ballot

The biggest winner in Brazil's blockbuster weekend election did not even appear on the ballot.

Banned from public office, former President Jair Bolsonaro is under house arrest, serving a 27-year sentence for a coup plot after his 2022 election loss. The 71-year-old watched from confinement on Sunday as his eldest son, Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, scored an upset victory over leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in the first round of the presidential election.

The result, which pundits linked to a right-wing wave sweeping the region and Lula's own campaign missteps, made Flavio the favorite to win second-round voting on 25 October. The shock victory represented a stunning reversal of his father's fortunes as the rehabilitated Bolsonaro family and ideological movement emerged stronger than ever.

Candidates from Bolsonaro's right-wing Liberal Party won up and down the ballot, demonstrating growing traction for the brand despite his legal woes, which the new right-wing Congresscould resolve when it takes office in January.

Along with Flavio's surprising success, four more members of the family won public office on Sunday including Senate seats for Michelle Bolsonaro, the ex-president's wife, and second son Carlos while brother Renato and youngest son Jair Renan took seats in the lower house.

"In Brazilian political history, I do not remember any political clan that ever managed to elect so many members all at once," said political analyst Antonio Flavio Testa, who served on the former president's transition team in 2018.

When the imprisoned ex-president tapped his son to run for Brazil's highest office in December, markets tumbled and center-right allies turned up their noses. Flavio enlisted a little-known lawmaker from his own party, Alfredo Gaspar, as running mate because no other major party would join the ticket.

Flavio's most important ally could not appear in public even virtually to campaign for him but still loomed large over the race. An AI-generated avatar of the elder Bolsonaro gave a controversial endorsement of Flavio at his campaign launch.

The real Jair Bolsonaro has moved from serving his sentence in prison to house arrest since March due to ill health including complications from a 2018 stabbing. The Supreme Court prohibited visits from his eldest son for the past three months.

Their Liberal Party nearly doubled its bloc in the 81-seat Senate on Sunday to 28 seats, the strongest result for a party since Brazil's constitution was enacted in the 1980s after the country's return to democracy.

That will put amnesty for the elder Bolsonaro at the top of Congress' agenda next year, according to a close aide of Flavio who requested anonymity to speak openly. A vote on the matter could come even sooner if Flavio wins and the current Congress decides to curry favor with the incoming government.

Flavio said in early September that he hoped he would be inaugurated with his father present. "I ask God for the opportunity to walk up the ramp of Planalto Palace next year alongside President Jair Messias Bolsonaro," he said.

Bolsonaro and Lula, who got 47% and 45% of Sunday's vote respectively, go head-to-head in a second-round vote that political consulting firm Think Policy said would be "very difficult, but not impossible" for Lula to win.

To do that, Lula needs to get 62% of voters who backed conservative candidates other than Flavio in the first round, Think Policy estimated.

With prospects for Flavio's victory promising, Liberal Party President Valdemar da Costa Neto told Reuters that the elder Bolsonaro could once again play a role in government under his son.