A nationwide presidential election poll released in Brazil this week found that conservative candidate Sen. Flavio Bolsonaro (Liberal Party – Rio de Janeiro) has narrowed the lead of his primary opponent, socialist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, to bring it nearly to the margin of error.
Sen. Bolsonaro jumped into the 2026 race in December after the nation’s top court, the Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF), sentenced his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, to 27 years in prison for alleged “crimes against democracy.” As part of that sentence, the elder Bolsonaro — who very narrowly lost the election against Lula in unfair circumstances in 2022 — is also banned from running for any public office until the year 2060, at which point he will be 105 years old. Bolsonaro is serving his time in a federal prison despite suffering from significant health complications, including a cancer diagnosis and severe digestive issues as a result of a failed 2018 assassination attempt in which a socialist stabbed him in the abdomen during a campaign stop.
The poll released this week was conducted by Datafolha and published by the left-wing newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo. Folha described the presidential race in its analysis of the result as “completely different from that documented… in December last year.” In particular, Flavio Bolsonaro appears to have consolidated the conservative, anti-Lula vote that initially appeared hesitant to embrace him as the successor to his father, especially in light of support for Sao Paulo Governor Tarcísio de Freitas. De Freitas and Bolsonaro rapidly moved to assert that they would not be rivals in the race and the governor endorsed Bolsonaro, citing his father’s support, which has limited division on the right.
Brazil holds its presidential elections in one or two rounds — typically in the first round, all registered candidates appear on the ballot and the candidate with 50 percent or more support wins the presidency. If no candidate wins, the election goes into a second round in which the top two candidates square off for the office. Datafolha found that, in a first round, Lula would attract 38 percent support, while the younger Bolsonaro would come in second place with 32 percent. This is a dramatic increase for Bolsonaro, who was 15 points behind Lula in previous Dataholfa polls. This poll included four other candidates and 11 percent of those surveyed said they would not vote for any of the candidates. Another three percent described themselves as “undecided.”
In a run-off election, Lula would still win, Datafolha found, but by a percentage nearly within the margin of error. The incumbent attracted 46 percent support to 43 percent for Bolsonaro in the poll, which has a two-percent margin of error. Past Datafolha polling in December showed Lula trouncing Bolsonaro 51 percent to 36 percent.
The Brazilian outlet Gazeta do Povo observed that, while Lula remains in the lead in the polling, there is reason to panic for his leftist Workers’ Party (PT). Without Lula, for example, Datafolha found that Bolsonaro would defeat the likeliest leftist candidate, top Lula official Fernando Haddad (Jair Bolsonaro defeated Haddad in 2018 to become president). Lula’s name recognition could also be a disadvantage — only one percent of Brazilians do not know who he is compared to seven percent for Flavio Bolsonaro. Winning half of those voters would bridge the gap for Bolsonaro in a second round race, according to the poll findings.
The possibility also exists that Datafolha’s results may not fully register conservative support for Bolsonaro. Another poll published this week by the first Realtime/Bigdata, which only polled in Sao Paulo, found Bolsonaro leading in one of the biggest states in the country by four points. Maximizing voter turnout in the more right-leaning major cities — compared Lula’s strongholds in the northeast — could improve the conservative candidate’s chances in the race.
A less recent poll, published in January by Futura/Apex, found Bolsonaro leading in a runoff, 48 percent to 42 percent support for Lula. Notably, that poll also documented Lula winning a first round of the vote if Tarcísio de Freitas was also a candidate. De Freitas would win a run-off against Lula by a smaller margin than Bolsonaro, the poll found.
Flavio Bolsonaro announced in December that he would run, with his father’s blessing, to promote conservative values in the country. He suggested he would step down from the candidacy if the Brazilian government freed his father and allowed him to run.
“I cannot, and will not, resign myself to watching our country walk through a time of instability, insecurity, and discouragement,” he said in his announcement statement. “I will not stand idly by while I see the hope of families being extinguished and our democracy succumbing.”
Brazilians will vote in the first round of their presidential election on October 4.
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