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🇧🇷 Brazil /Elections & Politics

Quaest poll puts Lula at 37% and Flávio Bolsonaro at 30% in first round

From Folha de S.Paulo · () Portuguese

Translated from Portuguese and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Documents & data Context piece
  • Lula leads Flávio Bolsonaro 37% to 30% in the first national Quaest poll since Brazil's 2026 campaign officially began.
  • Writer Augusto Cury has 10%, up from 2% in the previous Quaest survey, while 11% are undecided and 7% plan to cast blank or invalid ballots or abstain.
  • Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro are statistically tied in a second-round simulation, while Lula leads the other tested candidates.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva enters Brazil's 2026 presidential campaign with a seven-point lead over Flávio Bolsonaro in the first round, according to a Quaest poll released Wednesday. Lula has 37% of voting intentions, compared with 30% for the senator and son of former president Jair Bolsonaro.

The result is nearly unchanged from Quaest's previous poll on Aug. 14, when Lula held 38% and Flávio Bolsonaro 31%. The biggest movement came from writer Augusto Cury, who reached 10%, up eight points. Cury had drawn attention after a BTG/Nexus poll showed him rising from 2% to 11% between surveys, placing him behind only Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro. A report by Instituto Democracia em Xeque said Cury gained about 2.5 million Instagram followers from Aug. 16 to 29. Rival campaigns questioned whether his team had paid influencers, an allegation his marketer, Sergio Lima, denied in an interview with Folha.

Renan Santos has 3%, while Ronaldo Caiado and former Minas Gerais governor Romeu Zema each have 1%. Eleven percent remain undecided, and 7% say they will vote blank, invalidate their ballot or not vote.

The poll interviewed 2,004 voters aged 16 and older in person across Brazil from Sunday through Tuesday. It has a margin of error of two percentage points and a 95% confidence level. Globo commissioned the survey, which is registered with Brazil's Superior Electoral Court under code BR-07065/2026.

In a second-round matchup, Lula leads Flávio Bolsonaro 42% to 40%, within the margin of error. Lula also leads Caiado 42% to 37%, Zema 44% to 33%, and Renan Santos 43% to 36%. The report also noted that Lula's campaign faces police investigations involving his son Fábio Luís Lula da Silva, known as Lulinha. The president has defended the inquiry, saying that no citizen is above the law and that his son should be punished if found guilty.

I am not a president who tries to ban investigations. I do not threaten to fire ministers. I do not threaten to punish police officers. Investigate.

— Luiz Inácio Lula da SilvaThe Brazilian president defended the police investigation involving his son in an interview with Record.
About this summary

Originally published by Folha de S.Paulo in Portuguese. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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