-
Pollsters can't agree on who's ahead, but they agree the race is a toss-up: AtlasIntel's newest survey gives Senator Flávio Bolsonaro a narrow edge, 47.2% to 46.8%, while a Datafolha poll taken the same week put President Lula back in front, 46% to 44% — both gaps sit inside each survey's margin of error.
- Jair Bolsonaro handed his son the family's political future from a hospital bed in December, five days after beginning a 27-year prison sentence that also bars him from running for office again until 2033.
-
Roughly 917,000 Brazilians abroad are cleared to vote for president only, and fresh data from the country's electoral court shows Boston has overtaken Miami as the largest Brazilian voting bloc in the United States.
Three weeks ago, Brazil's presidential race looked settled. Today it doesn't. A poll published Thursday by AtlasIntel for Bloomberg puts Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, whose father Jair remains behind bars after his own presidency, ahead of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva by less than half a percentage point in a simulated runoff, 47.2% to 46.8%. That gap sits comfortably inside the survey's one-point margin of error, meaning the contest remains, in strict statistical terms, a coin flip.
A Lead That Had Already Flipped Once
Thursday's release wasn't actually the first sign of trouble for Lula's campaign. AtlasIntel had shown him ahead in every runoff simulation it ran for Bloomberg since the cycle began, most recently by a comfortable 47.1% to 42.6% margin in late August. That cushion evaporated fast: a week later, on September 10, the same firm found Flávio numerically ahead for the first time, 46.4% to 46.2%. What changed this week is mainly that the gap widened slightly and the sample grew — AtlasIntel questioned 5,018 respondents from September 11 through 16 for its latest release.
Where the Other Pollsters Land
No other major house tells quite the same story. Datafolha's own field work ran September 15 through 17, the freshest data available from any pollster, and it put Lula narrowly back in front, 46% to 44%, among 2,002 respondents. PoderData, working for the Aya Institute, had already found the opposite: a 47%-to-45% Flávio lead in early September, its widest gap of the cycle. Two smaller trackers split the difference — Meio/Ideia shows a flat 46-46 tie, while Palver gives Flávio a two-point edge, 46% to 44%. Every one of these results, regardless of house or method, falls inside its own margin of error.
Flávio Bolsonaro isn't running by his own initiative alone. His father was convicted of orchestrating a plot to stay in power after losing the 2022 election and began serving a 27-year sentence on November 25, 2025, a punishment that also extended his ban from public office to 2033. Days later, from a Brasília hospital bed ahead of hernia surgery, Jair used a handwritten letter — read aloud by Flávio himself — to hand his eldest son the family's political banner, describing him as the one who would carry forward an unfinished national project. Liberal Party leadership confirmed the endorsement effectively settled its presidential nomination.
Washington Becomes a Campaign Issue
The senator's ties to the Trump administration have turned into a controversy of their own. After proposed 25% U.S. tariffs on Brazilian goods followed a Bolsonaro visit to Washington in June, Lula accused his rival of inviting that pressure himself. Flávio traveled back to Washington in July to formally request a 180-day delay on the tariffs until after the election, arguing the levies would only hand his rival a political win he hadn't earned at the ballot box. Lula branded that request "yet another act of treason against the Fatherland." The pressure campaign may be backfiring on the very camp that launched it: Gimena Sanchez, who directs Andes programs at the Washington Office on Latin America, told Al Jazeera that Bolsonarismo is "afraid that tariffs actually strengthen Lula's support" because ordinary Brazilians resent the interference. An eight-point Lula lead in a mid-July Quaest poll, 45% to 37%, has since disappeared entirely.
The Diaspora That Could Decide It
Brazilians registered abroad vote for president and vice president only, and this cycle their numbers grew sharply: the electoral court's tally puts roughly 917,000 people abroad as eligible, up nearly a third from the 697,000 who could vote in 2022. The United States alone accounts for more than a quarter of that total. Boston has become the largest single U.S. voting bloc, with about 53,290 registered voters, edging past Miami's roughly 42,500 — a reversal from 2022, when Miami's 40,100 outnumbered Boston's 37,100. New York's consular district, which also serves New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Bermuda, counted close to 28,000 voters in the last comparable cycle. Registration to newly enroll or transfer abroad closed on May 6, so anyone already on the rolls now needs only to confirm their polling place through the electoral court's e-Título app and file a justification if they can't reach a consulate on either October 4 or a potential October 25 runoff.
With three weeks left before the first round, the only thing every pollster agrees on is that nobody actually knows how this ends.
