Brazil’s presidential race has narrowed to a two-man contest, and the first polls released since Sunday’s first round show conservative Senator Flávio Bolsonaro leading incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ahead of the October 25 runoff.
Brazil held the first round of its 2026 general election on October 4. Bolsonaro finished ahead of Lula but fell short of the 50-percent threshold needed to win outright, automatically triggering a second round between the two top finishers.
The result defied pre-election projections that had pointed to Lula leading the first round, though neither candidate was expected to clear the majority mark in a single pass. Days later, polling firms began publishing their first surveys of the runoff matchup — and all three reviewed by Breitbart News show the conservative senator ahead.
Datafolha: 52-48 among valid votes
The left-leaning firm Datafolha was reportedly first out of the gate, releasing its post-election survey on Thursday. According to the firm, 49 percent of respondents said they intend to vote for Bolsonaro, while 45 percent said they will vote for Lula. Those figures include voters who said they would cast a blank or null ballot, along with those still undecided.
When only valid votes are counted — stripping out blank, null, and unsure responses — Bolsonaro’s support rises to 52 percent against Lula’s 48 percent, a four-point edge for the senator, as explained by Jovem Pan.
Atlas/Bloomberg and PoderData show wider gaps
Atlas/Bloomberg’s latest survey put Bolsonaro at 52.8 percent to Lula’s 47.2 percent, a 5.6-point lead. Factoring in blank, null, and undecided responses trims that margin by a mere 0.2 points, according to the poll. UOL reported that the Atlas/Bloomberg survey carries an error margin of roughly one percent.
PoderData, a subsidiary of Poder360, released its own survey Thursday showing a six-point Bolsonaro lead: 53 percent to 47 percent. The poll was conducted between Monday, October 5, and Thursday, October 8 — the first days of the official runoff campaign.
Poder360 also asked respondents who they believe is most likely to win on October 25. Fifty-four percent said Bolsonaro, while 37 percent named Lula. That expectation gap has widened sharply in a single week: belief in a Bolsonaro victory is up nine percentage points, while confidence in a Lula win has fallen by 11 points over the same stretch. Before Sunday’s vote, 45 percent expected Bolsonaro to take the first round, against 48 percent who expected the incumbent to finish ahead.
Shifting confidence among each camp’s supporters
The PoderData survey found a notable erosion of confidence inside Lula’s own base. Just 76 percent of respondents who identified as Lulistas said they are confident the president will win, while 92 percent of Bolsonaro’s backers said they are confident the senator will be Brazil’s next president.
Poder360 also flagged a historical pattern worth watching: since Brazil returned to democracy in the 1980s, no candidate who finished second in the first round has gone on to win the runoff. The outlet noted that the trend does not determine the outcome of this race, but does illustrate the scale of the climb facing Lula and his Workers’ Party.
Endorsements stack up behind Bolsonaro
In the days since the first round, Bolsonaro has picked up the backing of several candidates who were eliminated on Sunday — Romeu Zema of the right-wing Novo party, Ronaldo Caiado of the Social Democratic Party, Augusto Cury of the centrist Avante party, and Clariana Barão of the Christian Democracy party.
The runoff is scheduled for Sunday, October 25. Polls at this stage of a Brazilian presidential race are a snapshot rather than a forecast, and the roughly three-week campaign window gives Lula’s camp time to consolidate support among the roughly half of first-round voters who backed neither candidate. For now, however, the early runoff surveys show the conservative frontrunner holding a consistent lead across multiple pollsters with different methodologies and political leanings.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/latin-america/2026/10/09/brazil-flavio-bolsonaro-ahead-of-socialist-lula-in-first-pre-runoff-polls/