Brazil voted on Sunday, and the night delivered two headlines that point in very different directions.

The first: Erika Hilton, a travesti congresswoman from São Paulo, was re-elected with nearly 1.6 million votes, the most any woman has ever received for Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies. The second: the presidential race is going to a runoff on October 25, and right now it’s Senator Flávio Bolsonaro who is narrowly in front of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Here’s what happened and why LGBTQ+ Brazilians are watching both stories.

A record, six times over

With the count complete, Hilton (PSOL) had 1,596,383 votes, Brasil de Fato reported. That put her second in the whole country, and it smashed the previous record for a woman in the Chamber: 1,078,666 votes, set by Joice Hasselmann in 2018.

For scale: in 2022, her first run for Congress, Hilton won 256,903 votes. She has multiplied that more than six times in one term.

Her path there is worth remembering. In 2020 she was elected to São Paulo’s city council as the most-voted woman in the country. In 2022 she and Duda Salabert became the first two trans women elected to Brazil’s federal Chamber. Hilton now chairs the Chamber’s Women’s Rights Commission, according to the Washington Blade.

On election night she kept the focus off herself. “Essa vitória não é minha, é coletiva,” she said: this victory isn’t mine, it’s collective.

The threat that came with the vote

The same day had a darker side. On Sunday morning, as she was getting ready to vote, Hilton received an anonymous email containing a death threat and transphobic insults, with the sender claiming to know her personal details and address, Brasil de Fato reported. It was sent through a service that makes tracing difficult.

Her response was characteristically unbothered. Next to the threats she and her family receive regularly, she said, this was “só mais uma bobeira no meio do caminho de algum idiota desocupado que não suporta ver o nosso brilho”: just one more bit of nonsense from some idle idiot who can’t stand to see us shine.

She also named the context plainly: “O Brasil, de maneira muito triste, ainda segue sendo o primeiro país do mundo que mais mata mulheres como nós.” Brazil, very sadly, is still the country in the world that kills the most women like us. Global monitoring backs her up: Brazil recorded more murders of trans people than any other country in 2025, as PinkNews reported in February.

The rest of the rainbow ballot

Hilton wasn’t running alone. The tracking project VoteLGBT counted a record 529 openly LGBTQ+ candidates in this election, 109 of them trans or travesti, the Washington Blade reported. Candidacies for the Chamber of Deputies alone jumped from 116 in 2022 to 214, an 84% rise, according to Projeto #Colabora.

Some early results:

  • Duda Salabert (PSOL), a literature teacher and environmentalist, was re-elected in Minas Gerais with more than 200,000 votes, Itatiaia reported. In 2022 she became the first trans federal deputy in the state’s history, O Tempo notes.
  • Jean Wyllys, the first openly gay man elected to Congress, who left Brazil in 2019 after death threats, ran again for the Workers’ Party in São Paulo but was not elected, with 18,073 votes, per Metrópoles.

Full results for the hundreds of other LGBTQ+ candidates, from state assemblies to the Senate, are still being compiled. We’ll update when VoteLGBT publishes its tally.

The presidential race: three weeks, two names

With 99.99% of machines counted, Flávio Bolsonaro (PL) had 47.03% of valid votes and Lula (PT) 45.16%, The Rio Times reported. Nobody reached 50%, so it’s a runoff on Sunday, October 25. Turnout was 78.92%.

Flávio is the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is serving a prison sentence of more than 27 years for his role in the January 8, 2023 coup attempt, the Washington Blade noted. Lula beat Jair Bolsonaro in 2022 and is now seeking a fourth term.

Hilton was explicit about where she stands. “A nossa vitória só será completa com a reeleição do presidente Lula,” she said: our victory will only be complete with President Lula’s re-election.

Why it matters

Brazil is a country of contradictions for queer people. Its courts have delivered some of Latin America’s strongest protections, including recent rulings on trans healthcare coverage, while the streets remain dangerous, especially for trans women and travestis.

Sunday showed both sides at once: a travesti politician drawing more votes than any woman in the country’s history, on the same morning she was sent a death threat. The next three weeks will decide who leads the country she now helps legislate for. Whatever happens on October 25, Hilton’s 1.6 million votes are already counted.

Sources: Brasil de Fato; The Rio Times; Washington Blade and on VoteLGBT’s count; Projeto #Colabora; Itatiaia; O Tempo; Metrópoles; PinkNews. Photo: Ana Soares / Unsplash.