Flávio Bolsonaro leads Lula by six points in first runoff poll

Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro has opened a six-point lead over President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the first major poll published since Brazil's first-round presidential election. According to the PoderData/Aya poll released on October 8, 2026, the conservative challenger holds 53% of valid votes against the leftist incumbent's 47% ahead of the decisive October 25 runoff.

The poll indicates that Flávio Bolsonaro—the eldest son of former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro—has captured the post-election momentum. In the first-round vote on October 4, Flávio finished ahead with 47.03% (56.1 million votes), while Lula secured 45.16% (53.8 million votes). The narrow 1.87 percentage point gap from the ballot box has now widened to six points in the first poll of the second-round campaign, signaling a swift consolidation of conservative and centrist voters behind the challenger.

A key driver of Flávio's momentum is his success in absorbing the bases of eliminated third-party candidates. According to the PoderData/Aya data, Flávio has successfully captured 72% of the voters who backed Minas Gerais Governor Romeu Zema and 57% of those who supported Goiás Governor Ronaldo Caiado in the first round. By contrast, Lula has struggled to attract these moderate and right-leaning swing voters, securing just 10% of Zema's voters and 19% of Caiado's.

The shifting dynamics have also triggered a sharp reversal in public expectations. The survey shows that 54% of respondents now expect Flávio to win the presidency, a nine-percentage-point increase in a week, while those expecting a Lula victory fell 11 points to 37%. The poll was conducted from October 5 to 7 via telephone interviews with 3,000 voters across 705 municipalities, carrying a margin of error of 1.8 percentage points.

What it touches

The prospect of a right-wing transition has introduced fresh volatility into Brazilian financial markets, raising questions about future fiscal policy and the direction of state-controlled enterprises. Investors tracking these political risks closely monitor the MSCI Brazil ETF (EWZ), which serves as the primary liquid vehicle for international exposure to Brazilian equities and typically fluctuates in response to shifting election polling.