The midterm elections in the United States are fast approaching: on Tuesday, November 3, American voters will elect their representatives to the American Congress. President Donald Trump’s right-wing conservative Republican Party currently has a majority in both chambers.
But in other parts of the world, the election results are already in. In Serbia and Brazil, the majority of voters voted for left-wing parties. These results will not influence the midterm elections in the United States, but the victories of the Student List in Serbia and of outgoing President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva in Brazil are still bad news for Trump.
In Serbia, he lost an important European ally in outgoing President Aleksandar Vucic. And in Brazil, the Trump camp hoped that 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 his son Flavio,” says Lawrence J. Haas, a senior fellow on U.S. foreign policy at the American Foreign Policy Council, who served as communications director to Al Gore, Bill Clinton’s vice president, in the 1990s. the other,” he continues, “and he has no warm feelings towards Lula. Relations will therefore remain calm at best.”
Trump said Brazilian election appeared ‘rigged’
Flavio Bolsonaro is under investigation in Brazil for 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 despite ongoing legal proceedings.
Bolsonaro refused to recognize his defeat. Instead, he claims there were voting irregularities. This is reminiscent of Trump, who continues to claim – falsely – that Joe Biden and the Democratic Party “stole” the 2020 US election. Trump’s comments on Bolsonaro’s defeat sounded very familiar. “Frankly, this looks like another rigged election,” the US president said on Monday. “Elections have to be uncontestable – and that seemed very bad to me.”
Good relations with Vucic, Putin’s ally
Aleksandar Vucic had ruled Serbia with an iron fist since 2017. He resigned just before these elections in order to become prime minister, a position he previously held from 2014 to 2017. Vucic has said in the past that he and President Trump are like-minded. Trump’s eldest son, Donald Jr., visited Vucic in Belgrade shortly before the November 2024 U.S. presidential elections and then again a few months later.
The American Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), closely linked to Trump’s MAGA (“Make America Great Again”) movement, recently announced that it would hold a meeting in Belgrade in November, with Vucic as the keynote speaker. We don’t know if this is still the case.
Another commonality between Vucic and Trump is that the future ex-president of Serbia has a much more positive attitude towards Russian President Vladimir Putin than most other European heads of state. Vucic did not join EU countries in imposing sanctions on Russia after launching its war of aggression against Ukraine. Belgrade still buys Russian raw materials and Serbian state media under Vucic have presented a more positive image of Russia than the EU.
Trump also appears increasingly inclined toward Moscow. His special envoy Steve Witkoff recently called Putin a “humanitarian,” while in an interview Trump himself openly admitted that he gets along better with Putin than with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The end of the Vucic government now means that Trump has lost one of his few allies in Europe who shares a similar view.
Israel: the outcome remains unclear
There is still a chance that the Israeli elections could produce a result that might please Trump. 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 coalition negotiations will be very difficult.
Trump and Netanyahu were close allies well before February of this year, when they joined forces to launch a war against Iran. In 2018, during his first term, Trump moved the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The move was controversial, as both Israel and the Palestinians claim Jerusalem as their capital. Netanyahu’s camp welcomed the move.
Today, the United States remains by far Israel’s most important partner, while Israel is an important regional ally for the United States. It is unclear what their relationship would be with another Israeli government. If Netanyahu remains in power, little, if anything, will change.
No rosy outlook for Trump in midterms
With Vucic’s defeat, Trump lost a loyal ally. And Lula’s victory means for him that an unpleasant president remains in power. None of this is good for Trump, but foreign policy analyst Haas said it would not influence his country’s important midterm elections. “Americans will vote … based on the issues that concern them and what they think of the party in power.”
But that doesn’t bode well for Trump either. “Trump has the lowest approval rating of any president heading into a midterm election since Harry Truman in 1946,” Haas said. “Americans are very concerned about affordability issues and strongly oppose the U.S.-Iran war.”
Benjamin Alvarez Gruber in Miami contributed to this report, originally written in German.
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