Brazil: Lula and Bolsonaro tied at 45 percent ahead of October vote
The latest Datafolha poll shows Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his right-wing challenger Flavio Bolsonaro entering the campaign tied at 45 percent each, pointing to a close presidential race.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his strongest challenger from the right, Flavio Bolsonaro, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, have entered the campaign neck and neck. Each polls at 45 percent, according to the latest Datafolha survey released on 16 May.
Another 9 percent of voters say they plan to cast blank or spoiled ballots in October. That is a mood signal neither the Workers’ Party nor the Liberal Party can ignore in the final phase of the campaign.
For Serbia, whose ties with Brazil are concentrated in agricultural trade, the outcome is not neutral. Bilateral exchange reached 380 million dollars in 2025.
In his current term Lula has pursued a BRICS-oriented foreign policy that occasionally opens room for Belgrade in multilateral formats not conditioned on EU accession benchmarks. A Bolsonaro return to Brasilia would mean a closer line to Washington and a possible shift in strategic priorities. The Serbian mission in Brasilia and the Brazilian embassy in Belgrade are tracking the campaign as part of routine briefings to the government.
Lula won his third term in October 2022 by defeating Jair Bolsonaro. He has announced a fourth run, arguing that his current mandate “only ends at the close of 2026” and that he has time to finish the reforms he started. Flavio Bolsonaro, a former senator from Rio de Janeiro, is campaigning on security, anti-corruption and traditional family values, the same template his father used in 2018 and 2022.
Three flashpoints likely to decide the race
The first flashpoint is the economy. Under Lula, unemployment has fallen from 9.3 percent in January 2023 to 6.1 percent in April 2026. Yet inflation is running at 4.8 percent and the real has weakened 11.2 percent against the dollar. Bolsonaro is leaning on inflation as his core message, while Lula stresses the drop in extreme poverty, where the number of people in the deepest deprivation has fallen from 19 million to 12 million.
The second flashpoint is the film-financing scandal that engulfed Bolsonaro in May. Investigations by TV Folha de Sao Paulo and the UOL portal revealed that Bolsonaro’s team had used state culture funds for projects that bypassed standard selection procedures. Bolsonaro denounces the affair as “a political hit”, but it cost him two percentage points in May.
The third flashpoint is BRICS positioning. In 2025 Lula used the BRICS framework to sign more than thirty bilateral agreements with China in Beijing and Brasilia. Bolsonaro calls that approach “wasteful” and says that under him Brazil would “restore close ties with Washington”, a signal the White House is also watching.
Trump’s circle quietly backs Bolsonaro
According to a Wall Street Journal investigation published on 22 May, Donald Trump’s inner circle is quietly coordinating with Bolsonaro’s team, particularly through former adviser Steve Bannon. Washington remains formally neutral, but Trump’s camp could openly back Bolsonaro in the final weeks of the campaign. In Brazilian politics that would cut both ways, depending on the region.
Brussels is monitoring the campaign through the EU delegation in Brasilia but is not engaging. Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic said on Tuesday that “the EU expects the Brazilian electoral process to be transparent and the result to be respected”, a careful formulation signalling that Brussels does not want to interfere in a domestic campaign.
What do you expect from October’s vote in Brazil, a return of the Bolsonaro dynasty to Planalto or a fourth Lula term that keeps BRICS policy on its current track?
