Brazilians vote with Lula on 45 to 46 percent and no one near 50

Brazilians are voting on Sunday for a president, a vice president, all 513 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 54 of the 81 Senate seats. No final first-round tally is in yet. The last published surveys, taken on Friday and Saturday, leave Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva short of the majority that would end the contest today.

A candidate needs more than 50 percent of valid votes to win in the first round. Valid votes are ballots cast for a named candidate. Blank and null papers are stripped out before the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) does that sum. If nobody clears the line, the top two meet again on 25 October. Every Brazilian presidential election since 2002 has gone to that second round.

What the last polls actually measured

Datafolha published its final survey on Saturday evening after interviewing 4,006 voters in person on 2 and 3 October. The margin of error is 2 points. The TSE registration is BR-01708/2026. Among all voters, Lula has 42 percent and Senator Flavio Bolsonaro 40 percent. Once blank and null ballots are removed, the valid-vote split is 45 percent to 42 percent. In a forced runoff, Datafolha has Lula at 47 percent and Bolsonaro at 46 percent, inside the margin.

Quaest, commissioned by Globo, interviewed 3,702 voters on the same two days, also with a 2-point margin, registration BR-02197/2026. On valid votes it has Lula at 46 percent and Bolsonaro at 45 percent. Among all voters the figures are 40 percent and 38 percent. In a runoff, Quaest reverses the order: Bolsonaro 44 percent, Lula 42 percent. The two houses that dominate Brazilian television coverage therefore agree on a first-round photo finish and disagree on who would win three weeks later.

A third Saturday release, CNT/MDA, surveyed 2,007 people from 30 September to 2 October, margin 2.2 points. It has Lula at 47.8 percent of valid votes and Bolsonaro at 42.1 percent, with a runoff of 47.3 percent to 43.1 percent. AtlasIntel, in an earlier window from 23 to 28 September with 5,005 respondents, had Lula at about 46 percent of valid votes and Bolsonaro at about 43 percent, and a runoff deadlocked at 50 percent each. The spread across houses is wider than any single margin of error. That is the practical fact for a reader watching the count: the polls locate the race, they do not pick a winner.

The rest of the ballot

The field behind the two leaders is thin, which is why a first-round knockout is unlikely. On Datafolha's valid-vote numbers, Ronaldo Caiado of the PSD has 4 percent, Augusto Cury of Avante 3 percent, Renan Santos of Missao 3 percent, and Romeu Zema of Novo 1 percent. Quaest has Cury, Santos and Caiado at 3 percent each. Those shares matter twice. They keep either frontrunner under 50 percent. They also decide which parties clear the threshold that shapes the next Congress, where the president will have to pass a budget and any tax bill.

Lula, 80, is seeking a fourth non-consecutive term. He won in 2002, 2006 and 2022, and lost in 2018 after being barred from that ballot. Flavio Bolsonaro, a senator from Rio de Janeiro, is the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro and has campaigned as the candidate closest to Donald Trump. Jair Bolsonaro himself is not on the presidential line. The family name is the organising fact of the right-wing vote, which is why small-party conservatives have not consolidated behind a single alternative.

How the count will land

Voting is electronic. Polls close at 5 p.m. Brasilia time. The TSE has said it starts publishing results from 4 p.m. Eastern, which is the same hour. A national picture usually forms within a few hours, not overnight. That speed is the reason Brazilian election nights are arguments about the last percent, not about missing boxes. It is also why a late swing in one region, the Northeast for Lula or the South and Centre-West for Bolsonaro, can move the valid-vote total across the 50 percent line or leave it short by a point.

Prediction markets have been less cautious than the pollsters. On Friday, Polymarket priced Flavio Bolsonaro at about a 57 percent chance of winning the presidency, runoff included, against 43 percent for Lula. Kalshi was near 58 percent for Bolsonaro. Those prices are not votes. They are a bet that the runoff, if it happens, breaks right. The Datafolha runoff is a one-point Lula lead. The Quaest runoff is a two-point Bolsonaro lead. Both sit inside error.

The open question at the close of polls is mechanical, not rhetorical. If the valid-vote total for the leader lands between 48 and 50 percent, the country gets a three-week campaign in which the 3 to 4 percent held by Caiado and the smaller names becomes the only pool large enough to decide October 25. If it lands above 50, the Congress elected today still has to govern with a president who won without a second mandate from the runoff electorate.