YPA Cafecito: Brazil's 2026 Presidential Election

Brazilians will head back to the polls on October 25 for a presidential runoff election between Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of ex-President Jair Bolsonaro, and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who is running for an unprecedented fourth term. Flávio outperformed polls in the first round, as his party scored major legislative victories. Is a Flávio presidency inevitable or can Lula make up the difference?

Join Young Professionals of the Americas for an off-the-record roundtable at the A&O Shearman office, featuring Queens College, CUNY's Jorge Antonio Alves and AS/COA's Luisa Leme, moderated by Chase Harrison. The speakers will delve into Lula and Flávio's first-round performances, what to watch for in the runoff, and expectations for Brazil's political future. 

Capacity is limited and YPA members get priority. Contact ypa@as-coa.org to register.

Speakers 

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Jorge Antonio Alves

Jorge Antonio Alves (PhD, Brown University) is associate professor of political science at Queens College, CUNY, where he teaches courses on comparative and international politics of Latin America, and the political economy of development in the Global South. He is also the current director of Queens College’s Latin American and Latino Studies (LALS) program, where he has organized a long-running interdisciplinary speaker series.

His research focuses on Brazilian subnational politics, particularly on how political parties choose how they will compete nationally and locally and the effect of those choices on governance institutions that provide public goods like social services, especially public health. His work has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Comparative Politics, Latin American Politics and Society, and the Journal of Politics in Latin America, as well as edited volumes by Brookings Press. Dr. Alves was also a contributor to the Washington Post’s Washington Post‘s Monkey Cage (now Good Authority), NPR, and other media.

He is currently working on a fieldwork-based book project about how the Brazilian public health care system responded to the twin stress tests of the COVID-19 pandemic and the illiberal turn in western democracies.

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Luisa Leme

Luisa Leme is senior director of content production at Americas Society/Council of the Americas Online, where she leads video and audio production, live broadcasts, and multimedia strategy. She’s the creator and executive producer of Latin America in Focus, AS/COA's podcast that now includes over 200 episodes and was featured by Apple. At AS/COA, Luisa has produced more than 300 live events in nine different countries across the years, and social media video with over three million video views across platforms in 2024.

A Brazilian journalist and producer based in New York, she has experience in broadcast news, international organizations, and nonprofit communications, with work that tells nuanced stories about politics, economics, and culture in the Americas. Before AS/COA, she worked at the United Nations News and Media Department, in independent documentary filmmaking, on mega-events like the Summer Olympics, and at cultural institutions. Her work has appeared on TV Globo, Radio France Internationale, Arte 1, Rádio CBN, the Associated Press, Americas Quarterly, the newspapers Folha de S. Paulo and O Globo, and the Rio 2016 Summer Olympics broadcast channel.

Luisa holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and communications from Faculdade Cásper Líbero and a MA in International Affairs from Washington University in St. Louis. Luisa speaks multiple languages and works in English, Portuguese, and Spanish. Luisa is a member of the Online News Association, lives in Queens with her family, and is a committed crafter and cinephile.

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