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The far-right just lost. Twice.

In Serbia and Brazil, huge numbers of voters turned out on Sunday to repudiate right-wing populists.

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Vox isn’t typically in the business of covering elections in far-flung locales like the central Balkans. (No offense whatsoever to anyone from the central Balkans!) But on Sunday, an insurgent student-backed movement in Serbia successfully toppled the country’s ruling right-wing political machine, creating an unexpected opening for democratic reform.

Then, in another upset halfway around the globe, Brazilian voters reelected incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva over his far-right challenger, Flávio Bolsonaro. “Democracy always, dictatorship never again,” Lula said in his victory speech.

A daily, curiosity-driven guide to the big, weird, and fascinating ideas shaping the news cycle.

That’s two big repudiations of the nationalist right in 24 hours. Not quite enough to declare a trend, maybe, but sufficient to remind us that there’s still hope for the world’s embattled democratic institutions.

More than that, these results offer evidence of something that sounds naive and Pollyannish in........

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