Brazil Poll: Flávio Bolsonaro Widens Runoff Lead Over Lula to 47–45

Brazil · Elections

The latest PoderData/Aya national survey puts Flávio Bolsonaro two points ahead of Lula in a second-round scenario — his second consecutive lead and the widest gap of this series in the 2026 campaign, with Augusto Cury holding a decisive tenth of the electorate in the first round.

A Two-Point Gap That Keeps Growing

The poll published on Thursday, September 10, gives Flávio Bolsonaro 47% of voting intentions in a runoff against President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who takes 45%. Blank and null votes account for 6% and the undecided for 2% — both shrinking, a sign that the electorate is consolidating three weeks before the first round.

PoderData, working with the Aya Institute, conducted 3,000 telephone interviews between September 6 and 9. The margin of error is 1.8 percentage points, and the survey is registered with the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) under number BR-04914/2026, as Brazilian law requires.

The movement inside the series matters more than any single number. In mid-August, Lula led the same simulation 46–45. On September 3, Flávio edged ahead 45–44 for the first time in this pollster’s sequence. Now the gap is two points — technically still within reach of a statistical tie, but the direction is no longer ambiguous. When we last covered this series on September 1, the runoff was deadlocked at 44–44.

First Round: Cury Still Holds the Balance

In the first-round scenario, Lula leads with 38%, followed by Flávio at 36% — inside the margin of error — and Augusto Cury, the psychiatrist and writer running for the Avante party, at 10%. No other candidate reaches 3%.

Cury’s tenth of the electorate is the prize both camps will fight for after October 4. On Monday, the president of the Solidariedade party, federal deputy Paulinho da Força, declared his vote for Cury with a sentence that captures the mood of that electorate: he would not vote for Lula “under any circumstances,” and he would not vote for Flávio either. Cury is positioning himself as the vessel for voters exhausted by fifteen years of polarization.

The runoff simulations confirm how fluid that bloc is. In a Cury–Lula matchup, Cury wins 44–43, a technical tie. In a Flávio–Cury matchup, the senator wins 43–36. In other words: Cury’s voters lean right when forced to choose, but not monolithically — which is why both campaigns court him and attack him in the same breath.

A Split Polling Landscape

Other institutes tell different stories, and honest readers should hold them together. Nexus, working for BTG Pactual, published its first Flávio lead — 46–45 — on September 8, as we reported then. Quaest, on the same day, showed a dead heat at 41% each. AtlasIntel, on August 31, still had Lula ahead 47.1–42.6.

Pollsters disagree because their methods differ — telephone versus face-to-face, how they treat the undecided, how they weight the poor Northeast against the richer South. Regional surveys underline the geography of the race: Quaest found Lula at 58% in first-round intentions in Maranhão in late August, while a Gerp survey in the same period put Flávio ahead 48–41 in a São Paulo runoff. The Northeast wall holds for Lula; the Southeast is where the election will be decided.

Approval, Blank Votes and the Road to October

The same survey measures the president’s personal performance: 51% disapprove and 41% approve. That ten-point negative gap has been a feature of the campaign since June, and it is the number Lula’s strategists watch most nervously — incumbents rarely win re-election with a majority of the country against them, though Lula has done improbable things before.

Two quieter numbers explain why the race tightened. Blank and null intentions fell from 8% to 6% in a week, and the undecided from 3% to 2%. As the protest vote finds a home, it is breaking — for now — slightly more toward the challenger than toward the president. With free television time and the debate calendar now dominating the campaign, small shifts compound quickly.

The first round is on October 4; a runoff, if no candidate wins a majority of valid votes, on October 25. Between now and then, watch three things: whether Cury’s 10% begins to migrate, whether the institutional crisis around the Banco Master investigation moves undecided voters, and whether the next PoderData round confirms a trend or marks the high-water mark of the challenger’s September surge.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does the latest Brazil poll show?

The PoderData/Aya survey published on September 10, 2026 shows Flávio Bolsonaro at 47% and Lula at 45% in a runoff simulation. In the first round, Lula leads with 38%, Flávio has 36% and Augusto Cury 10%. The poll interviewed 3,000 voters by phone from September 6 to 9, with a margin of error of 1.8 points.

Is Flávio Bolsonaro really ahead of Lula?

Numerically, yes — for the second consecutive PoderData round, and by his widest margin in the series. But a two-point gap with a 1.8-point margin of error is close to a statistical tie, and other pollsters disagree: Quaest shows a dead heat, AtlasIntel still shows Lula ahead. The race is effectively a coin flip with momentum on Flávio’s side.

When is Brazil’s 2026 presidential election?

The first round takes place on October 4, 2026. If no candidate wins a majority of valid votes, the top two meet in a runoff on October 25, 2026 — currently the most likely scenario according to every major pollster.

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