Lula Narrows Flávio’s Lead in 2 Brazil Polls

BRAZIL · ELECTION POLLS

Two polls published on Monday 19 October 2026 show President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva closing on Senator Flávio Bolsonaro six days before Brazil’s presidential runoff on Sunday 25 October. AtlasIntel, polling for Bloomberg, has Flávio ahead 49.8% to 47.6%, down from a 5.4-point lead on 9 October, while Nexus, polling for the bank BTG Pactual, has him ahead 46.5% to 45.9%.

A third poll released that morning, PoderData, moved the other way, with Flávio at 52% and Lula at 48% of valid votes after a 50-50 tie in its previous wave. For US readers, the winner will run Latin America’s largest economy, and all five polls checked for this article still put Flávio numerically ahead.

Lula is the incumbent from the left-wing Workers’ Party (PT) and is seeking re-election. Flávio Bolsonaro is a senator for Rio de Janeiro who runs for the conservative Liberal Party (PL) and is the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro.

What the Two New Polls Found

AtlasIntel interviewed 4,998 people online from 13 to 18 October, with a margin of error of one point and registration BR-02418/2026 at the electoral court, the TSE. It found Flávio at 49.8%, Lula at 47.6% and 2.6% blank, null or undecided, which is 51.1% to 48.9% on valid votes.

AtlasIntel’s previous wave, from 3 to 8 October with 5,026 interviews, had Flávio at 51.1% and Lula at 45.7%, or 52.8% to 47.2% on valid votes. Lula therefore gained 1.9 points and Flávio lost 1.3, which cut the gap from 5.4 to 2.2 points.

Nexus interviewed 2,002 voters by telephone from 16 to 18 October for BTG Pactual, with a margin of error of two points and registration BR-04499/2026. Flávio has 46.5% and Lula 45.9% of all answers, or 50.3% to 49.7% on valid votes, which Jovem Pan describes as a technical tie.

In its first runoff poll, published on Tuesday 13 October, Nexus had Flávio at 48% and Lula at 45% of all answers, so the gap shrank from about three points to 0.6. Those earlier figures are rounded, so the true change could be a little larger or smaller.

The Poll That Moved the Other Way

PoderData, a poll published by the Brazilian news site Poder360, interviewed 3,000 people by phone from 16 to 18 October, with a margin of error of 1.8 points and registration BR-02586/2026. It found Flávio at 52% and Lula at 48% of valid votes, up from a 50-50 tie in its previous wave of 13 to 15 October.

A two-point move is about the size of this poll’s 1.8-point margin of error, so it can be noise as well as change. PoderData’s two waves are only three days apart, which is why no single wave should be read as a trend.

Datafolha and Quaest Before the Debate

Datafolha, the polling institute of the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo, interviewed 2,520 voters face to face on 13 and 14 October and found Flávio at 47% and Lula at 45%, or 51% to 49% on valid votes (registration BR-00466/2026). A week earlier, on 6 and 7 October, it had Flávio at 49% and Lula at 45%.

Quaest, in a poll commissioned by the Globo media group, interviewed 2,154 voters face to face from 10 to 13 October and found Flávio at 46% and Lula at 44% (registration BR-08729/2026). Both polls were finished before the Senate approved the proposal to end the 6×1 work schedule, six days on and one off, on the night of 14 October, and before the debate.

Why Polls Missed in the First Round

The first round on Sunday 4 October is the latest real test of these pollsters, and it was not a clean one. The electoral court counted 56,104,503 votes for Flávio, 47.03% of valid votes, and 53,879,538 for Lula, 45.16%.

AtlasIntel’s final poll before that vote had Lula at 47.0% and Flávio at 44.1% of valid votes, and Datafolha’s last poll had Lula at 45% and Flávio at 42%. Both therefore understated Flávio, by about three points at AtlasIntel and about five at Datafolha, which is a reason to treat a one-point or two-point lead in either direction with caution.

What It Means for You

If you hold Brazilian stocks, bonds or funds, or trade the real, expect the final week to move with each new poll, because the surveys describe a race close enough for either candidate to win. Brazil’s economy was about US$2.19 trillion in 2024, the largest in Latin America and bigger than Mexico’s at about US$1.83 trillion, according to World Bank data.

US policy is part of the contest as well. In the Band debate on Sunday 18 October, the public news agency Agência Brasil reported, Lula questioned Flávio’s ties to the United States and raised Brazilian control over critical minerals, while Flávio defended cooperation against organised crime and denied having worked to impose tariffs on Brazilian companies, despite his brother Eduardo Bolsonaro’s calls for tariffs on Brazilian exports.

Polls and prediction markets measure different things, so read them together. Brazilian law requires every poll to be registered with the electoral court at least five days before release, so a number such as BR-02418/2026 is the first thing to check on any poll shared online.

What Is Not Known

No poll yet shows how voters reacted to the debate on Sunday 18 October, because interviews for all five polls ended by that day. As of Monday 19 October the newest Datafolha and Quaest polls are those finished on 14 and 13 October, and no later wave from either was found.

It is also unknown whether Lula’s gains are a trend or noise, since the 0.6-point Nexus gap sits far inside that poll’s two-point margin of error and PoderData moved the other way. Jovem Pan notes that AtlasIntel’s 2.2-point gap is wider than that poll’s one-point margin, but the first round showed that final polls can miss by more than that.

Between 2.6% and 10% of respondents in the four polls that publish the figure say they will vote blank or null or are undecided, and it is not known how many will vote or for whom. Brazil’s electoral court publishes the official result after the count on Sunday 25 October, and nothing before then is a result.

What Prediction Markets Say

On Polymarket, an online prediction market, traders gave Flávio Bolsonaro a 76.2% chance of winning the 25 October runoff and Lula 23.5% at 8:20 p.m. ET on 19 October, with about US$188.2 million traded on the election event. Flávio’s price stood near 87% on Tuesday 13 October, about eleven points higher than today, and the move cannot be pinned on any single poll.

These prices are bets, not polls. A Lula price of 23.5 cents reads as a 23.5% chance of a win, which is roughly one in four.

Why we show this: prediction markets turn real-money bets into a live probability that moves within minutes of the news, which is why investors, campaigns and newsrooms in the United States now follow them closely. We show them next to polls and official results, never instead of them.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is ahead in the Brazil runoff polls?

All five polls checked for this article, from AtlasIntel, Nexus, PoderData, Datafolha and Quaest, put Flávio Bolsonaro numerically ahead of Lula by 0.6 to 4 points. Several leads sit inside the margin of error, and Datafolha describes its own result as a technical tie.

Which polls show Lula gaining?

AtlasIntel shows Lula up 1.9 points to 47.6% since its poll of 3 to 8 October, and Nexus shows the gap with Flávio down from about three points to 0.6 since its poll of 13 October. PoderData moved the other way, with Flávio rising from 50% to 52% of valid votes.

Do these polls include the debate?

No poll checked here shows the full effect of the Band debate on Sunday 18 October, because interviews for all five ended by that day. AtlasIntel’s field work ended before the debate, according to InfoMoney.

When is the Brazil runoff?

Brazil votes on Sunday 25 October 2026, according to the electoral court’s calendar. Flávio Bolsonaro and Lula qualified for the runoff after the first round on 4 October.

How accurate were the polls in the first round?

The final AtlasIntel and Datafolha polls understated Flávio by about three and five points of valid votes. Lula’s 45.16% was close to Datafolha’s 45% and below AtlasIntel’s 47.0%.

Sources: AtlasIntel poll, 13 to 18 October 2026 (report, 19 October), AtlasIntel poll, 3 to 8 October 2026, AtlasIntel poll, 27 September to 2 October 2026, Jovem Pan on the BTG/Nexus poll, 19 October 2026, Diário do Grande ABC on the first BTG/Nexus runoff poll, 13 October 2026, Poder360, PoderData poll, 19 October 2026, Datafolha, 13 and 14 October 2026, Datafolha, 6 and 7 October 2026, Datafolha, 2 and 3 October 2026, InfoMoney on Quaest, 14 October 2026, DCI on Quaest, 14 October 2026, InfoMoney on AtlasIntel, 19 October 2026, Electoral court (TSE), first-round presidential result, 100% of sections, Electoral court (TSE), 2026 election calendar, Agência Brasil on the Band debate, 19 October 2026, Law 9,504 of 1997, article 33, poll registration, World Bank, GDP in current US dollars, 2024. Registration numbers are as printed by the pollsters and the outlets cited. Polymarket prices are public market data of 19 October 2026, 8:20 p.m. ET.

Editorial responsibility: Matthias Camenzind, Editor-in-Chief · Editorial standards · Report an error

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