President Lula’s “mathematically difficult” electoral victory has put a huge spanner in the works of the US’ Donroe Doctrine.

On Sunday, Brazil staged one of the most dramatic electoral comebacks of recent history. Incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva managed to beat Flávio Bolsonaro in the run-off of the presidential elections with 64,256,232 votes (51.8% of the vote share) to Bolsonaro’s 59,826,041 votes: a difference of more than 4.4 million votes.

Such an outcome seemed almost impossible just three weeks ago, when Bolsonaro won the first round with 47.03% of the votes to Lula’s 45.16%.…