The midterm elections in the United States are just around the corner: On Tuesday, November 3, American voters will choose their representatives to the US Congress. The right-wing-conservative Republican party of President Donald Trump currently has a majority in both chambers.
But in other parts of the world election results are already in. The majority of voters in both Serbia and Brazil cast their ballots for left-wing parties. Those results will not influence the midterms in the US, but the victories of the Student List in Serbia and the incumbent president, Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva, in Brazil are bad news for Trump all the same.
In Serbia, he has lost an important European ally in outgoing president Aleksandar Vucic. And in Brazil, the Trump camp had been hoping Flavio Bolsonaro would triumph.
“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,” says Lawrence J. Haas, a senior fellow for US foreign policy at the American Foreign Policy Council, who was communications director for Al Gore, Bill Clinton’s vice president, in the 1990s. “Trump wasn’t happy about the defeat of either Bolsonaro,” he continues, “and he doesn’t feel warmly toward Lula. So relations will remain cool at best.”
Trump declared Brazilian election looked “rigged”
Flavio Bolsonaro is under investigation in Brazil for alleged corruption and money laundering. After losing the election, he fled the country for Florida. The US State Department granted him and his family entry visas in spite of the pending legal action.
Bolsonaro has refused to concede defeat. Instead, he claims there were irregularities in the vote. This is very reminiscent of Trump, who continues to claim โ falsely โ that Joe Biden and the Democratic Party “stole” the US election in 2020. Trump’s comments on Bolsonaro’s defeat sounded very familiar. “It looked like another rigged election, frankly,” the US president said on Monday. “Elections have to be indisputable โ and it looked very bad to me.”
Good relations with Putin ally Vucic
Aleksandar Vucic had ruled Serbia as president with an iron fist since 2017. He resigned just before these elections in order to stand as prime minister, a role he previously held from 2014 to 2017. Vucic has commented in the past that he and President Trump are like-minded people. Trump’s eldest son, Donald Jr., visited Vucic in Belgrade shortly before the US presidential elections in November 2024, and again a few months later.
The US Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which is closely connected with Trump’s MAGA (“Make America Great Again”) movement, recently announced that it was organizing a meeting in Belgrade in November, at which Vucic was to be a keynote speaker. It is unclear whether this is still the case.
Another thing Vucic and Trump have in common is that the soon-to-be-ex-president of Serbia has a much more positive attitude toward Russian president Vladimir Putin than do most other European heads of state. Vucic did not join EU countries in imposing sanctions on Russia after it launched its war of aggression against Ukraine. Belgrade still buys Russian raw materials, and Serbian state media under Vucic presented a more positive image of Russia than of the EU.
Trump also seems increasingly inclined toward Moscow. His special envoy Steve Witkoff recently described Putin as a “humanitarian,” while, in an interview, Trump himself openly admitted that he got on better with Putin than with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The end of the Vucic government now means that Trump has lost one of his few allies in Europe who takes a similar view.
Israel: Outcome still unclear
There’s still a chance of an outcome in the Israeli elections that might be to Trump’s liking. With more than 96% of votes counted, the right-wing bloc led by prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in the lead. However, Trump ally Netanyahu has lost his majority, and the coalition negotiations will be very difficult.
Trump and Netanyahu have been close allies since well before February this year, when they joined forces to launch a war against Iran. In 2018, during his first term in office, Trump moved the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This was controversial, because both Israel and Palestinians claim Jerusalem as their capital. Netanyahu’s camp welcomed the decision.
Today, the United States is still by far Israel’s most important partner, while Israel is an important regional ally for the US. It is not clear what their relationship would be like with a different Israeli government. If Netanyahu remains in power, little, if anything, will change.
No rosy prospects for Trump in the midterms
With Vucic’s defeat, Trump has lostย a loyal ally.ย And Lula’s victory means, for him, that a disagreeable president remains in power. None of this is good for Trump, but foreign policy analyst Haas said it won’t influence the important midterm elections in his country. “Americans will be voting […] on the basis of issues that affect them, and how they feel about the party in power.”
But this doesn’t bode well for Trump, either. “Trump has the lowest approval rating of any president on the eve of a mid-term election since Harry Truman in 1946,” Haas explained. “Americans are very concerned about issues of affordability, [and] they strongly oppose the US-Iran war.”
Benjamin Alvarez Gruber in Miamiย contributed to this report, whichย was originally written inย German.