Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva would beat Senator Flavio Bolsonaro in a simulated second-round runoff for October’s presidential election, according to a Nexus poll commissioned by BTG Pactual. The survey details were fed into an electoral simulation which put Lula on 47%, against 43% for Bolsonaro—the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro.
The latest figures show a small shift from a July 13 poll, which had Lula ahead by 47% to 44%. The result suggests the leftist president remains slightly favoured in a head-to-head contest, although the race is still close.
In a first-round scenario, Lula would lead with 42% of the vote, followed by Bolsonaro on 33%, Ronaldo Caiado on 6%, Renan Santos on 5% and Romeu Zema on 3%. Under Brazil’s electoral rules, a runoff is held if no candidate wins more than half of valid votes in the first round.
Nexus surveyed 2,004 people between July 24 and 26, with a margin of error of two percentage points.
Ex-president Jair Bolsonaro remains in prison—found guilty of plotting a coup by seeking to overturn the 2022 election won by his left-wing opponent, current President Lula—despite the support of U.S. president Donald Trump’s administration.
