Brazil’s presidential race tightened dramatically in August, with a new poll showing Senator Flavio Bolsonaro numerically ahead of President Lula in a runoff for the first time, as the incumbent’s rejection rate climbed above 50 percent just five weeks before the October 4 first round.
The Vox Brasil poll, released on August 29 and registered with Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court (TSE), puts Lula at 37.1 percent and Bolsonaro at 34.8 percent for the first round. The gap of just 2.3 percentage points falls inside the survey’s 2.15-point margin of error, making the two frontrunners statistically tied. Just one month ago, the gap was nearly ten points, representing one of the fastest narrowings of a Brazilian presidential race in recent memory.
The bigger surprise sits in the second-round simulation. Flavio Bolsonaro appears with 45.1 percent against Lula’s 44.5 percent in a head-to-head matchup. It is the first time the senator has led that scenario in the Vox Brasil series. In July, Lula won the same matchup by 47.5 percent to 41.1 percent, a swing of nearly seven points in a single month. An additional 7.9 percent of voters said they would cast blank or spoiled ballots, while 2.5 percent did not know or declined to answer.
Rejection Rates Tell the Story
The underlying numbers paint a challenging picture for the incumbent. Lula’s rejection rate rose to 52.7 percent in August, up from July, meaning more than half of surveyed voters said they would not vote for him under any circumstances. Flavio Bolsonaro’s rejection fell to 49.3 percent, down three points in a month, as the opposition candidate gained visibility through a series of high-profile media appearances and campaign events.
The poll was conducted by interviewing 2,100 voters in person at their homes between August 25 and 27, with a 95 percent confidence level. The survey was commissioned by the Vox Brasil institute and is registered with the electoral court under protocol BR-05519/2026. In Brazil, only registered polls can legally be published during the campaign period, lending the results additional credibility.
‘The gap between the two men has narrowed by seven points since our previous round in late July,’ the Vox Brasil institute said in its release. The first round of Brazil’s presidential election takes place on Sunday, October 4.
Against other possible runners-up, Lula still holds a comfortable lead. In a matchup with former Minas Gerais Governor Romeu Zema of the NOVO party, the president leads 45.5 percent to 39.3 percent. Against Ronaldo Caiado of the Social Democratic Party, Lula also leads comfortably. But the Flavio Bolsonaro scenario is clearly the one that has alarmed the incumbent’s camp the most.
Bolsonaro Pledges to Respect Election Result
In a separate but closely related development, Flavio Bolsonaro used a televised interview on Globo’s Jornal Nacional on August 28 to pledge that he would respect the result of the October vote. The commitment carried enormous symbolic weight given that his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, refused to acknowledge his defeat in the 2022 election, claimed without evidence that electronic voting machines were rigged, and was later convicted and imprisoned for plotting a coup.
When asked whether the pledge applied even if he lost, Flavio said he would not lose and predicted victory in the first round. He also acknowledged that his earlier assertion, repeated during the campaign, that a Venezuelan company manufactured Brazil’s electronic voting machines was incorrect. The admission was notable given that doubts about voting machine integrity have been a central theme of the Bolsonaro movement since 2022, and the claim had been used to stoke skepticism about the electoral process among his supporters.
Flavio Bolsonaro also used the interview to name a health minister for his hypothetical administration and to pledge amnesty for his imprisoned father and others convicted in connection with the January 2023 attempted coup at the Brasilia government complex. The amnesty promise is likely to energize his base while alarming civil society groups and the judiciary, which spent years building the cases against the coup plotters.
Geographic Divide Shapes the Race
A separate series of Quaest state polls released during the week mapped the geography of the race with unusual clarity. Lula leads across Brazil’s Northeast, the traditional Workers’ Party stronghold that delivered him comfortable margins in 2022. Flavio Bolsonaro runs ahead in much of the South and Center-West, regions where his father built a loyal following during four years in office. The race in the Southeast, home to Sao Paulo and the largest number of electoral votes, remains closely contested and could prove decisive.
Other institutes tell a similar story with different numbers. BTG/Nexus, published on August 24, gave Lula 41 percent and Flavio Bolsonaro 37 percent in the first round, a four-point gap that also represented significant tightening from previous months. A Datafolha survey from earlier in August showed a similar trajectory, with Lula’s lead shrinking steadily as Flavio gained name recognition and media coverage.
The October 4 first round is now just five weeks away. If no candidate wins more than half of the valid votes, the two leaders meet in a run-off four weeks later. With the race now effectively tied, the Bolsonaro name carrying both the baggage and the mobilizing power of the 2022 crisis, and voter dissatisfaction with the economy running high, Brazil’s largest election in years is shaping up to be one of the most consequential in Latin America’s history.
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