On November 15, housing rights activist and rising star of the Brazilian left Guilherme Boulos made it into the runoff elections for the mayorship of São Paulo — the largest city in all the Americas and the financial center of Brazil. A member of the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL), Boulos ran alongside vice mayoral candidate Luiza Erundina, a veteran socialist who in the 1980s served as the first woman mayor of São Paulo.

With scant resources and electoral rules stacked against his party, Boulos defeated the Bolsonaro-backed far-right candidate Celso Russomanno to the second-place spot. That upset also means that the runoff election will take a sharp leftward turn, leaving out the influential Jilmar Tatto from the more social-democratic Workers’ Party (PT).

The conclusions to be drawn from Boulos’s victory are several. For one, it proved that a radical left-wing platform could overtake far-right forces both on social media and in the streets. Just as importantly, Boulos’s success suggests that the old pro-Lula / anti-Lula dichotomy that has so divided the Brazilian left in recent years may finally be drawing to a close.