With a little more than two weeks to go before Brazil’s first-round presidential vote, a new poll conducted by AtlasIntel for Bloomberg shows conservative Senator Flavio Bolsonaro holding a narrow edge over incumbent President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva — a gap small enough that the race remains, in the pollster’s framing, a technical tie.
In a head-to-head runoff scenario, 47.2 percent of respondents said they would vote for Flavio Bolsonaro, the Liberal Party (PL) senator and eldest son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, while 46.8 percent said they would back Lula of the ruling Workers’ Party (PT). The 0.4-point difference falls inside the survey’s one-percentage-point margin of error, and Brazilian outlets reported the results on Thursday.
The finding follows a pattern seen across recent polling: Flavio Bolsonaro has been steadily narrowing the gap with Lula since the campaign officially began in August. An AtlasIntel survey from late July had Lula ahead by more than 6.5 points in a runoff matchup, a margin that has now effectively disappeared.
A runoff all firms expect
Brazil’s general election is set for October 4, when voters will choose a president, governors and members of the country’s regional legislatures. Thirteen candidates will appear on the presidential ballot, and no candidate is expected to clear the majority threshold needed to win outright in the first round. Every major polling firm projects that the contest will be decided in a late-October runoff between Lula and Flavio Bolsonaro.
According to Jovem Pan, six percent of AtlasIntel respondents said they would cast a blank or null vote or did not know how to answer. Because neither candidate gains from those responses, the outlet recalculated the numbers with them removed, producing a slightly wider 50.2 percent to 49.8 percent split in Flavio Bolsonaro’s favor.
AtlasIntel also tested Lula against four other presidential candidates in hypothetical runoff scenarios. The incumbent president would defeat all of them, the poll found, with margins ranging from three to as much as 16 points depending on the opponent — an indication that the race’s competitiveness is concentrated in the Bolsonaro matchup.
What’s behind Lula’s slide
Bloomberg reported that Lula’s once-narrow advantage has “evaporated” over the past two months, pointing to Brazil’s economic slowdown and a series of corruption allegations involving his oldest son, Fabio Luis Lula da Silva. The outlet also tied the shift to an ongoing dispute at the Brazilian Supreme Court, which some outlets have described as a “civil war” among its justices.
Roughly half of those surveyed told AtlasIntel they expect the judiciary crisis to hurt Lula more than Flavio Bolsonaro at the polls.
Lula brushed off the trend during a podcast appearance on Wednesday, according to CNN Brasil. He said he is “not driven by polls” and added that he could not imagine “how we could not win these elections.”
The candidates and the stakes
Lula, who narrowly defeated then-President Jair Bolsonaro in 2022, is seeking a fourth presidential term. Flavio Bolsonaro entered the race after his father was barred from office and later convicted and sentenced to 27 years in prison on charges of crimes against democracy — a prosecution the elder Bolsonaro’s supporters have long disputed.
The younger Bolsonaro’s candidacy has been powered in part by his family’s enduring base, but the latest numbers suggest he is also drawing support from voters beyond that core. For Lula, the erosion of his lead comes as his government confronts economic headwinds and the fallout from controversies touching his family and the country’s top court.
With two weeks left before Brazilians cast their first-round ballots, the AtlasIntel survey is the latest sign that the race is tightening rather than breaking open — and that the runoff both camps have long anticipated could be one of the closest in recent Brazilian memory.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/latin-america/2026/09/17/poll-brazils-flavio-bolsonaro-ahead-lula-da-silva-technically-tied-presidential-race/