With the United States midterm elections set for Tuesday, November 3, when Americans will choose their representatives in Congress, President Donald Trump's Republican Party currently holds majorities in both chambers. But results from elsewhere in the world have already delivered setbacks for the US president, as voters in Serbia and Brazil both backed left-wing parties.
Although those outcomes will have no bearing on the US midterms, the victories of the Student List in Serbia and of incumbent Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva represent unwelcome news for Trump. In Serbia he has lost an important European ally in outgoing President Aleksandar Vucic, while in Brazil the Trump camp had been hoping for a triumph by Flavio Bolsonaro.
"Trump was a strong supporter of both Jair Bolsonaro, the Trump-like figure who served as president before Lula defeated him in 2022, and of his son Flavio," said Lawrence J. Haas, a senior fellow for US foreign policy at the American Foreign Policy Council and a former communications director for Al Gore in the 1990s. "Trump wasn't happy about the defeat of either Bolsonaro, and he doesn't feel warmly toward Lula. So relations will remain cool at best."
Flavio Bolsonaro is under investigation in Brazil for alleged corruption and money laundering. Following his election loss, he fled to Florida, and the US State Department granted him and his family entry visas despite the pending legal action. Bolsonaro has refused to concede, instead claiming there were irregularities in the vote, an approach reminiscent of Trump's own false insistence that Joe Biden and the Democratic Party stole the 2020 US election.
Trump's reaction to the Brazilian result sounded familiar. "It looked like another rigged election, frankly," he said on Monday. "Elections have to be indisputable, and it looked very bad to me."
Vucic had ruled Serbia with an iron fist as president since 2017 and resigned just before the election to stand as prime minister, a post he previously held from 2014 to 2017. He has described himself and Trump as like-minded, and Donald Trump Jr. visited him in Belgrade shortly before the November 2024 US presidential election and again a few months later. The Conservative Political Action Conference, which is closely tied to Trump's MAGA movement, recently announced a November meeting in Belgrade at which Vucic was to be a keynote speaker, though it is now unclear whether that will still happen.
Vucic also stands out in Europe for his friendlier stance toward Russian President Vladimir Putin. He declined to join European Union sanctions against Russia over its war against Ukraine, Belgrade continues to buy Russian raw materials, and Serbian state media under Vucic have portrayed Russia more favorably than the EU. Trump himself has shown an increasing inclination toward Moscow: his special envoy Steve Witkoff recently called Putin a humanitarian, and Trump has openly said he gets along better with Putin than with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Vucic's fall deprives Trump of one of his few European allies who shares that outlook.
In Israel, where votes are still being tallied, the outcome could yet favor Trump. With more than 96% of ballots counted, the right-wing bloc led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is ahead, though Netanyahu has lost his majority and faces difficult coalition negotiations. Trump and Netanyahu have been close allies since well before February of this year, when they joined forces to launch a war against Iran, and in 2018 Trump moved the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a decision welcomed by Netanyahu's camp. If Netanyahu stays in power, little is expected to change in the relationship between the two countries.
Foreign policy analyst Haas said none of this will sway the midterms, noting that Americans will vote on the basis of issues that affect them and how they feel about the party in power. That, however, offers little comfort to Trump. "Trump has the lowest approval rating of any president on the eve of a mid-term election since Harry Truman in 1946," Haas said, adding that Americans are deeply worried about affordability and strongly oppose the US-Iran war.
