Minutes after the polls were due to close at 5pm, a single judicial order changed the mood of Brazil's presidential runoff. Justice Cristiano Zanin extended voting until 7pm, and within hours the consequences were clear. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had won a historic fourth term. His opponent, the far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro, declared that it was "impossible" to concede and said his lawyers would ask the courts to annul the election.

The senator's argument rests on the extension itself. He called it "unacceptable" and compared it to "changing the rules of the game while the game was being played". He also stressed that Zanin was once Lula's personal lawyer and was appointed to the supreme court by Lula. The context is less tidy than that account suggests.

The extension was ordered only after the electoral court's president, Kassio Nunes Marques, spent hours without ruling on a request from Lula's campaign. Nunes Marques was appointed by Jair Bolsonaro and had been accused of bias in favour of the senator. Flávio Bolsonaro's own side had also asked for more voting time. The echo of 2022 is hard to miss.