Brazil’s Knife-Edge Polling Shows A Country Moving Early Into 2026 Mode

Key Points

• Lula ends 2025 narrowly underwater: 50.7% disapprove, 48.8% approve, 0.4% unsure.
• Voters reward visible pocketbook wins, but punish anything that feels like a new fee or tax.
• In side-by-side comparisons, Lula leads on most policy areas, while security and fiscal control remain tougher.

If you want to understand Brazil right now, start with a simple picture: a country that has stopped sitting on the fence.

AtlasIntel’s latest survey, conducted with 18,154 adults from December 10–15 and a stated margin of error of one percentage point, puts President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva slightly below water at year’s end. Disapproval is 50.7%. Approval is 48.8%.

The deeper signal is not the two-point gap. It is how little “middle” is left. When respondents rated the government overall, 48.9% called it bad or terrible and 46.5% good or great.

Only 4.6% chose “regular.” That is a polarized electorate behaving as if the next campaign has already begun. The splits help explain the mood. Men are more negative than women.

Younger Brazilians are sharply more disapproving than older voters, while those over 60 lean toward approval. Religion tracks politics, too: evangelicals are far more negative than Catholics.

Yet the same dataset complicates the easy story that the government is simply losing ground. When people compare Lula’s administration with Jair Bolsonaro’s across specific areas, Lula is judged better in almost everything.

The biggest advantages appear in tourism, culture and events (+12 percentage points) and housing (+11). He is also ahead on human rights (+9) and international relations (+6), and shows better readings in education, the environment, health and social policy.

Agriculture is essentially tied. Bolsonaro’s advantages remain in fiscal responsibility (-4) and public security (-3). That mix points to the “story behind the story”: Brazilians can prefer the current government in many domains while still feeling uneasy about the day-to-day direction of the country.

The poll’s “successes” and “errors” list is revealing. Popular items include expanded free medicines via Farmácia Popular and a proposed income-tax exemption up to R$5,000 ($926) per month.

Backlash clusters around measures framed as new burdens, including a proposal tied to Pix transactions above R$5,000 ($926) and taxes on low-value overseas purchases, often discussed around $50, roughly R$300 ($56).

In a 2026 simulation using the same candidates as 2022, Lula leads 46.7% to 44.0%, meaning Brazil is both dissatisfied and still electorally split.

Online sharing amplified the poll, and some posts even repeated the numbers incorrectly, a preview of how the information battle can distort reality.

Why this matters abroad is practical. A government governing on a razor-thin margin tends to prioritize quick, visible wins, avoid risky revenue moves, and campaign early.

That shapes Brazil’s fiscal choices, its security posture, and its diplomatic bandwidth, all of which feed directly into investor risk, regional stability, and global trade decisions.