A big tent helped Lula win. But it could hamper his agenda

Since far-right President Jair Bolsonaro came to power in January 2019, politicians from multiple parties talked about the need for a “democratic front” to counter his conservative extremism. 

Until the 2022 election, that never materialized. The opposition still seemed in tatters since a backbencher most of the establishment parties dismissed as a joke candidate rose to the presidency. For his entire term, Mr. Bolsonaro faced little resistance from center and left-wing parties. His crises were mostly of his own making.

It would take Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, arguably the country’s most popular politician, to assemble parties from different ideological stock in his effort to unseat Mr. Bolsonaro in the October election. 

His vice president, Geraldo Alckmin, is an establishment conservative against whom Lula successfully ran for re-election in 2006. Mr. Alckmin served as a bridge between the Workers’ Party and business and religious sectors. In the runoff stage, he attracted Simone Tebet, a senator with links to agribusiness, to his camp. And even decades-long adversaries vouched for the former president.

It was no small feat, considering how strong incumbency bias can be. In Hungary, far-right Viktor Orbán still got a majority against a broad front that united against him. In Italy, the group of parties that intended to bar the extremist Brothers of Italy party also failed.

A total of nine parties rallied behind Lula. Most political analysts would agree that they were decisive in pushing Lula over the hump to victory. 

The center-left leader beat Mr. Bolsonaro by a whisker, getting 50.9 percent of the vote in the October 30 runoff, despite the president pushing multiple pieces...