In two of the most anticipated national elections in recent memory — the U.S. midterms and the Brazilian presidential election — one polarizing constant loomed in the background of the anticipated results: the popularity of each country’s radical far-right leaders. 

For Brazil, this question laid on President Jair Bolsonaro, as the extreme right-wing incumbent ran for reelection to the highest office in South America’s largest democracy. 

In the U.S., this pertained to former President Donald Trump — while Mr. Trump wasn’t on the ballot on Nov. 8, dozens of candidates for federal and state positions alike won their primaries after they bent the knee to his extreme positions to earn his public support. 

To the chagrin of the radical corners of Brazil’s Liberal Party and the American GOP, both elections yielded a resounding statement: Americans and Brazilians alike are sick and tired of radical leadership and crave a return to normalcy.

Despite the national narrative of an impending “Red Wave” in the U.S. midterm election, Democratic candidates performed outstandingly — as President Biden recently trumpeted, Democrats lost fewer House seats in a Democratic President’s first midterm election in the last 40 years and Democratic gubernatorial candidates had their most successful midterm election since 1986. 

Granted, the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson that stripped the federal right to abortion was likely the leading factor at play in the Democratic Party’s history-defying midterm performance. However, another central theme that has arisen from the election’s results thus far is that those who ran on the Trumpian platform of election denialism lost in an embarrassing fashion.

Nearly every Secretary of State candidate who endorsed overturning the 2020 election lost their elections; Jan. 6 attendee running for the Pennsylvania governorship Doug Mastriano was trounced by 14 points; arguably the most vocal election denier candidate Kari Lake fell short in Arizona’s governor vote despite the seat being red for the prior 13 years. In fact, every single non-incumbent election-denying gubernatorial candidate lost their races. 

What’s notable about Lake’s defeat is that it now leaves the usually-battleground Grand Canyon State with a Democratic governor and two Democratic senators for the first time since 1950, after Senator Mark Kelly handily defeated Trump-backed challenger Blake Masters. Additionally, in the 46 races identified as “competitive” that contain an election denier, the conspiracy-touting candidates have now lost 32 races and won only 7.

On the whole, Republican candidates endorsed by Mr. Trump performed worse on Election Day. Whether they regurgitated the Big Lie as shamelessly as candidates such as Mastriano and Lake or not, it seems that even association via endorsement to the conspiracy-crazed former president was enough to harm Republican candidates in the majority of circumstances.

On the opposite side of the equator, a similar rebuff of radical leadership occurred as Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — known cordially by his people as “Lula” — recently defeated right-wing extremist incumbent Jair Bolsonaro in the Brazilian presidential election. 

Bolsonaro’s term and subsequent campaign for reelection were marked by turmoil. He implemented policies that ramped up deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, he mismanaged the COVID-19 pandemic so badly that he was accused of crimes against humanity, and, most salient to this discussion, he has been a champion of spreading conspiracies and misinformation — especially as it pertains to election security.

President Bolsonaro has spent years casting doubt upon the legitimacy of Brazil’s election systems, falsely claiming proof of voter fraud, that election officials manipulate results by counting votes in secret and that hackers unsuccessfully attempted to steal the 2018 presidential election from him. Predictably, Bolsonaro kicked his disinformation campaign into overdrive to create as much distrust in the electoral process as possible as election day neared.

In fact, his election lie campaign grew so audacious that people in the international security sphere and Brazilian citizens alike were legitimately concerned that, if Bolsonaro lost, he would refuse to transition power and the country’s young democracy would topple. 

A far-right leader who passed unpopular environmental policy, scoffed at the impending COVID-19 pandemic and then failed to mount a sufficient response once it arrived, loves spreading lies that erode trust in democratic institutions and still has yet to formally concede his election loss — sounds familiar to anyone?

While Trump and Bolsonaro are still the faces of their respective parties, recent election results indicate that voters in their countries are fed up with leaders who predicate their rule on extremism, bombast and conspiracy instead of working their hardest to address issues that are actually affecting citizens. 

For the first time in years, one can genuinely maintain a hopeful outlook that these political parties will spurn their far-right extremist leaders just as voters recently have — once this finally occurs, Americans, Brazilians and democracy at large will be better off. 

Nick is a senior in LAS.

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