Brazil’s 50 Top Soy Towns Gave Flávio 63%

BRAZIL · ELECTIONS · SOY

Brazil’s presidential runoff on Sunday 25 October may turn on the soy-farming interior and on how many big-city voters stay home, a Brazilian political analyst told Argentina’s Perfil newspaper on Monday 19 October. “The street is with Lula,” Bruno Lima Rocha said, but where the soy economy is, “the vote for Flávio was absurd [absurdly high], and the polls do not reach that.”

For US readers the stake is practical, because Brazil exports nearly three times as many soybeans as the United States, according to US Agriculture Department estimates for 2025/26, and its next president will set farm and trade policy. The two candidates are President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the left-wing Workers’ Party (PT) and Senator Flávio Bolsonaro of the conservative Liberal Party (PL), a son of former president Jair Bolsonaro.

The Rio Times checked the analyst’s claims against the electoral court’s own count, and the soy part holds: in the 50 biggest soy-growing municipalities Flávio won 63.1% of valid votes in the first round, against 30.7% for Lula. The street part is closer than he put it, because Lula led in only 11 of the 27 state capitals.

What the Analyst Told Perfil

Perfil introduced Bruno Lima Rocha as a journalist and doctor of political science, interviewed from Rio de Janeiro on Punto a Punto Radio (90.7 FM) and reported in its Córdoba section. A 2022 column biography in the Brazilian outlet Brasil de Fato lists him as a journalist, political scientist and professor of international relations.

The same biography lists him as a journalist for HispanTV Brasil, and HispanTV is the Spanish-language channel of Iran’s state broadcaster, but the Rio Times could not confirm whether he still works there. His own blog describes itself as strategic analysis based on South-South relations, the sovereignty of peoples and multipolarity.

He argued that Lula holds the big cities and their metropolitan areas, but that the soy and agro-export regions voted for Flávio by margins the polls do not capture. His closing line tied the result to turnout: “If absenteeism does not fall, the election goes to Flávio.”

He spoke the day after the Band and Estadão debate in São Paulo on Sunday 18 October, which Perfil called the candidates’ first televised exchange (see Lula and Flávio Clash in First Runoff Debate). In his view the hardest topics for Flávio to defend were questions about paramilitary links and his property purchases, and Lula challenged Flávio at the debate to open his bank records.

What the Electoral Court Count Shows

The soy claim holds for the center-west and south. In Mato Grosso, Brazil’s biggest soy state, Flávio won 65.2% of valid votes, in Paraná 59.9% and in Goiás 53.6%.

In the 50 biggest soy-growing municipalities, which grew 32.5% of the 2025 crop, Flávio won 63.1% to Lula’s 30.7%, up from 56.0% for Jair Bolsonaro in 49 of the same places in the 2022 first round. The eight where Lula led are all in the Northeast soy frontier of Bahia, Piauí and Maranhão.

Those 50 municipalities hold only about 1.7 million voters, roughly 1% of the electorate, so they supplied about 408,000 net votes of Flávio’s 2.22 million-vote lead. Outside the 27 capitals, counting votes cast abroad, he led 47.5% to 45.2%.

The big cities are less one-sided than the interview suggests: Lula led in São Paulo city (46.6% to 42.1%), Salvador, Fortaleza, Recife and Porto Alegre, but Flávio led in Rio de Janeiro (47.9% to 43.9%), Brasília (51.3% to 38.1%) and Belo Horizonte (48.3% to 41.4%). Across the 27 capitals Flávio led narrowly, 45.53% to 44.92%, a reversal from the 2022 first round, when Lula led Jair Bolsonaro there 45.55% to 43.24%.

Where Voters Stayed Home

Lima Rocha put the number of non-voters at 33 million, up 1% from 2022, and the court’s count is close: 33,469,244 voters (21.08%) skipped the first round, against 32,770,982 (20.95%) in 2022. That is a rise of about 0.1 percentage points, or about 698,000 more people (see Brazil Abstention 21.08%, First-Round High Since 1998).

What the Polls Show

Datafolha’s poll of 13 and 14 October, with 2,520 in-person interviews in 153 municipalities and a margin of error of 2 points, found Flávio at 47% and Lula at 45%, or 51% to 49% of valid votes. It found Lula ahead in the Northeast (61% to 32%) and in metropolitan regions (49% to 43%), and Flávio ahead in the South (57% to 35%).

The first round shows why the analyst’s warning resonates: Datafolha’s final survey, released on Saturday 3 October, had Flávio at 42% of valid votes, but he won 47.03%. It had Lula at 45%, close to his 45.16%.

What Prediction Markets Say

Polymarket, a platform where users bet real money, prices Flávio Bolsonaro at about 76% to win the runoff and Lula at about 23.5% as of 7:58 p.m. ET on 19 October, with more than US$188 million traded across the event’s markets. A separate Polymarket market on runoff turnout, with only about US$24,000 traded, rates 78% to 80% as the most likely band at 58%, close to the first round’s 78.92%.

Polymarket prices are bets, not polls, and a price of 76 cents reads as a 76% chance. The live prices from the platforms update below.

Why we show this: prediction markets turn real-money bets into a live probability that moves within minutes of the news, which is why investors, campaigns and newsrooms in the United States now follow them closely. We show them next to polls and official results, never instead of them.

What It Means for You

For US farmers and soy investors, the interior vote matters because Brazil dominates the export market: the US Agriculture Department projects Brazilian soybean exports of 118 million tonnes in 2026/27, against 46.1 million tonnes for the United States. Brazil’s statistics institute counted a 2025 crop of 165.3 million tonnes, and 30.4% of it came from Mato Grosso, where Flávio won 65.2%.

Investors in Brazilian assets and in prediction markets can treat the analyst’s two warnings as a checklist: how far turnout falls in the big cities, and how large Flávio’s margins are in the farm belt. Neither the polls nor the markets can show that before the vote, and the first-round count showed how far polls can be off.

What Is Not Known

Lima Rocha gave no evidence for his claims about paramilitary control over voters, paramilitary links of Flávio or Flávio’s property purchases, and he named no group or place; these are his characterizations, not findings by any authority, and the Rio Times has not verified them. Perfil’s headline says the interior’s vote is “controlled by economic power”, but those words do not appear in the interview text as published.

On Thursday 15 October electoral court justice André Mendonça suspended a Lula campaign ad that linked Flávio to militias, saying it offered no proof of the link, in a single-judge decision that goes to the court’s full bench. The reports reviewed do not show a reply from Flávio’s campaign to Lula’s debate challenge to open both men’s bank and phone records.

It is not known whether the polls missed the soy belt or something else, and the pollsters have not said. Nobody can yet say whether turnout in the big cities will rise from the first round’s 78.92% on 25 October.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Bruno Lima Rocha, and what did he say about Brazil’s runoff?

Bruno Lima Rocha is a Brazilian journalist and political scientist whom Perfil interviewed on 19 October 2026. He said Lula is strong in the big cities, that the soy belt voted heavily for Flávio Bolsonaro and that low turnout could decide the runoff.

Did the soy belt vote for Flávio Bolsonaro in the first round?

Mostly yes. In the 50 biggest soy-growing municipalities he won 63.1% of valid votes to Lula’s 30.7% and led in 42 of them, while Lula led in eight in Bahia, Piauí and Maranhão.

When is Brazil’s runoff and who is running?

The runoff is on Sunday 25 October 2026. President Lula of the Workers’ Party faces Senator Flávio Bolsonaro of the Liberal Party.

How many Brazilians stayed home in the first round?

The electoral court counted 33,469,244 voters, or 21.08% of the electorate, who did not vote on 4 October 2026. That is up from 32,770,982, or 20.95%, in the 2022 first round.

Sources: Perfil, interview with Bruno Lima Rocha, 19 October 2026, Superior Electoral Court (TSE), first-round presidential results, final count, 5 October 2026, TSE, election calendar and codes, 18 October 2026, TSE open data, 2022 presidential votes by municipality, TSE open data, 2022 turnout and abstention, IBGE, soybean output by municipality, 2025, US Department of Agriculture, WASDE report 676, 9 October 2026, Datafolha, runoff poll registered as BR-00466/2026, 16 October 2026, Diário do Nordeste, final first-round Datafolha poll, 3 October 2026, Gazeta do Povo, final first-round polls against the count, 5 October 2026, Diario de Pernambuco, Band and Estadão debate date, 6 October 2026, Metrópoles, Lula’s secrecy challenge, 19 October 2026, InfoMoney, electoral court suspends militia ad, 16 October 2026, Estratégia e Análise, Bruno Lima Rocha’s blog, 19 October 2026, International Journalists’ Network, on HispanTV and Iran’s state broadcaster, Diário do Nordeste, runoff debate schedule, 7 October 2026, Brasil de Fato, Bruno Lima Rocha column biography, 5 September 2022, Federal Senate, record of Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, Polymarket, Brazil presidential election and turnout markets, 19 October 2026. All retrieved on 19 October 2026. Capital-city and soy-municipality figures are the Rio Times’s own sums of the court’s municipal results.

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