Brazilians will vote on Sunday in the first round of a presidential election that final polls show is too close to call, pitting President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva against Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, a close ally of President Donald Trump. Lula, 80, leads every major first-round survey but falls well short of the majority needed to win outright. In a head-to-head runoff, the two candidates are statistically tied.
Prediction markets, meanwhile, have swung decisively toward Bolsonaro, the eldest son of former President Jair Bolsonaro. Brazil is Latin America's largest country and economy, and Sunday's vote has become the biggest test yet of Trump's effort to line up friendly governments across the hemisphere, following wins by Trump-endorsed candidates in Honduras last year and Colombia in June. The Trump administration has spent the past year pressuring Lula's government with tariffs, sanctions on a Supreme Court justice, terrorist designations for Brazil's largest gangs and a diplomatic standoff over visas.
A Bolsonaro win would bring Brazil into Trump's regional security coalition and mark the return of the Brazilian right less than four years after Jair Bolsonaro left office. Jair Bolsonaro is serving a 27-year sentence for plotting a coup after his 2022 loss to Lula and is barred from running. Across the last wave of national surveys, Lula holds a lead of one to five points in the first round, while the runoff sits inside the margin of error in nearly every poll.
Datafolha, among Brazil's most closely watched pollsters, released its latest survey Thursday showing Lula with 48 percent to Bolsonaro's 45 percent in a runoff, a one-point gain for the president that remains a technical tie. AtlasIntel's final pre-election poll, which surveyed 5,005 voters from September 23 to 28, put Lula at 46.2 percent of valid votes in the first round to Bolsonaro's 43.1 percent. The runoff was deadlocked at 50 percent each.
A Quaest poll commissioned by Globo, conducted September 24 to 27, had Lula ahead 39 percent to 34 percent in the first round, with the two tied at 42 percent in a runoff. A BTG Pactual/Nexus survey released the same day showed Lula leading 42 percent to 37 percent in the first round and 46 percent to 44 percent in a runoff. Two polls released Wednesday showed the race even tighter.
Meio/Ideia had the first round nearly level at 39.4 percent for Lula and 38.4 percent for Bolsonaro. A telephone survey by Futura/100% Cidades showed Bolsonaro ahead in a runoff, 49 percent to 43.5 percent, outside its margin of error of 2.2 points. Writer and psychiatrist Augusto Cury, Renan Santos of the Missão party, former Goiás Governor Ronaldo Caiado and former Minas Gerais Governor Romeu Zema are each stuck in single digits.
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