Datafolha Poll Shows Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro Locked in Tight Race
The final pre-election Datafolha poll reveals a highly competitive Brazilian presidential race, pointing to a tense second-round runoff.
BRASÍLIA — A final pre-election poll released on October 1, 2026, by the prominent research institute Datafolha confirms that Brazil’s presidential race is locked in an exceptionally tight contest. The survey shows incumbent leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva holding a narrow lead over right-wing Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the eldest son of former President Jair Bolsonaro. The highly competitive figures make a tense second-round runoff virtually certain.
In the first-round simulation of total votes, Lula leads with 42% against Flávio Bolsonaro's 38%. When isolating valid votes—the metric used by Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court that excludes blank, null, and undecided ballots—Lula holds 45% to Flávio Bolsonaro's 40%. Because a candidate needs more than 50% of valid votes to win outright in the first round on October 4, the race is poised to extend to a runoff on October 25.
A simulated second-round matchup reveals a technical tie. Lula registers 48% of total votes against Flávio Bolsonaro’s 45%. Given the poll’s margin of error of two percentage points, the two candidates are running neck-and-neck. The Datafolha survey, commissioned by Folha de S.Paulo and TV Globo, interviewed 2,506 voters across Brazil between September 28 and October 1.
A Battle of Legacies and High Rejection
The tight numbers reflect a deeply polarized nation where both leading figures carry significant political baggage. Lula, the 80-year-old leader of the Workers' Party, is seeking an unprecedented fourth presidential term. His opponent, Flávio Bolsonaro of the Liberal Party, represents the conservative movement built by his father, who was ruled ineligible to run after being convicted of plotting a coup.
This intense polarization has left both candidates with massive resistance among voters. The same Datafolha poll shows that both Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro suffer from identical, high rejection rates, with 45% of respondents stating they would not vote for either candidate under any circumstances.
With the frontrunners commanding such loyal but divided bases, the final outcome of the election will likely depend on where supporters of minor candidates migrate in the second round. Centrist and third-party candidates, such as doctor Augusto Cury and Goiás Governor Ronaldo Caiado, have struggled to break through the dominant Lula-Bolsonaro dynamic but hold key swing votes.
What it touches
The prospect of a razor-thin election and a highly polarized runoff keeps the outlook for Brazil's fiscal policy and state-backed enterprises highly uncertain. State-controlled oil giant Petrobras (NYSE: PBR) and public sector lender Banco do Brasil (B3: BBAS3) are traditionally sensitive to shifts in executive power, as investors weigh Lula's state-led development model against the privatization and market-liberalization platform championed by the Bolsonaro camp.