Brazil’s Presidential Race Enters Its Final Week in a Statistical Tie

Brazil’s presidential campaign enters its final days with the two leading candidates effectively even, setting up a contest between the governing left and the movement built by former President Jair Bolsonaro that could easily stretch into a second round.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of the Workers’ Party is seeking a fourth, nonconsecutive term. He led the country from 2003 to 2010 and returned to office after narrowly defeating Jair Bolsonaro in 2022. His main rival is Senator Flavio Bolsonaro of the Liberal Party, the former president’s eldest son, who has become the standard-bearer of the Brazilian right.

Voters go to the polls on Sunday, October 4. If no candidate wins more than half of the valid votes, the top two advance to a runoff on October 25.

The latest surveys offer little separation. A Datafolha poll of about 2,000 people, conducted September 22 and 23 and published last Thursday, showed Lula with 47 percent to Bolsonaro’s 45 percent in a simulated runoff, inside the poll’s two-point margin of error. In the first round, Datafolha had Lula at 40 percent and Bolsonaro at 36 percent, with several smaller candidates, including Augusto Cury and Ronaldo Caiado, in single digits. A Quaest poll released earlier that week put Bolsonaro narrowly ahead in a runoff, 42 percent to 41, and a BTG Pactual/Nexus survey showed Lula ahead by a single point.

The race has tightened since the summer. Quaest had Lula leading by five points in early August, and Datafolha surveys through mid-September showed him with a steady two-point edge before the latest readings.

The elder Bolsonaro is not on the ballot. He was barred from running after Brazil’s top electoral court found he had abused his power, and he is serving a prison sentence of about 27 years after the Supreme Federal Court convicted him of plotting to overturn his 2022 defeat. His son now carries the family name and much of its base into the race.

The opposition’s strongest case is a call for change. Lula, 80, is asking voters to keep him in office for a fourth term, and the steady narrowing of his lead since the summer suggests that a meaningful share of the electorate is open to an alternative, even one carrying the Bolsonaro name.

Lula has campaigned on the cost of living and on what he calls the defense of Brazilian sovereignty, a theme sharpened by pressure from Washington. The elder Bolsonaro is an ally of President Donald Trump, and Lula has accused the United States of trying to sway the race through economic pressure. He spent part of this month in New York for the United Nations General Assembly.

With both men inside the margin of error and a field of minor candidates splitting the remaining vote, the polls point toward an October 25 runoff rather than a decision on Sunday.