Brazil, Serbia, Israel and US Votes Hand Strongmen Four Straight Losses

The newest blow landed in the US, where Democrats swept Tuesday's congressional elections, taking clear majorities in both the House and the Senate and flipping states that had been Republican for generations. The scale of the win reshapes the final two years of Donald Trump's presidency and leaves him weakened by the decisiveness of the riposte — and by the instant divisions it opened inside his own party. The new majorities still face an uphill fight to restore the nation's democratic health after two years in which federal agencies were turned into political tools. Crucially, the US result also limits how far one illiberal government can boost others around the world.

In Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva completed a remarkable comeback on 25 October, beating Flávio Bolsonaro in the runoff with nearly 52% of the vote to claim an unprecedented fourth term. A surge in turnout, fuelled by grassroots activism and sharp use of social media, halted a far-right movement that had just won control of Congress and looked set to take the presidency. Political scientist Miguel Lago argued the result wasn't really about Lula, whose first-round showing exposed the limits of his personal pull. According to the Guardian, Lago said the runoff was Brazilian society saying no to the far right — a decentralised, nationwide movement he called a victory for democracy rather than for the left.

Flávio Bolsonaro refused to accept the outcome but, unlike his father, did not try to reverse it by force — he fled to Miami, where he keeps insisting he remains a national leader. Had he won, he had made clear his priority was freeing Jair Bolsonaro, serving 27 years for trying to stage a coup to hold power four years ago, before taking revenge on the judiciary and building an extreme rightwing authoritarian state. With one Bolsonaro in exile and the other behind bars, Lula has some breathing room — though a hostile Congress and governors loyal to the defeated regime mean not much. For now, the immediate threat to Brazil's institutions has passed.

Serbia delivered the shock of the cycle on the same day. A student-led movement, built over two years of demonstrations against Aleksandar Vučić's regime, turned street power into votes, with an improvised slate of professors, farmers and political amateurs winning 140 of the 250 seats in the national assembly. Vučić's Serbian Progressive party finished a distant second with 103. Slobodan Markovich of Belgrade University credited a snowball effect: students knocked on almost every door, people started believing change was possible, and non-voters flooded in. There are reports Vučić weighed a coup had the margin been tighter — his party denies it — and Markovich said police dissatisfaction was so widespread that officers largely withdrew half an hour after he conceded.