Marília Arraes of the PDT has 18% of voter intentions in the race for the Senate in Pernambuco, a state in Brazil's Northeast. Humberto Costa of the Workers' Party (PT) has 16%. The numbers come from a Datafolha poll released on Friday, September 11, commissioned by the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo and TV Globo. Pernambuco elects two senators in October's elections, and each voter casts two Senate votes.
The margin of error is three percentage points in either direction. Within that range, Arraes and Costa are technically tied for the lead. Mendonça Filho of the PL party has 12%, and Eduardo da Fonte of the PP has 10%. G1, Globo's news portal, describes the four as technically tied at the top. Folha notes that Mendonça Filho sits at the edge of the margin of error relative to Arraes, a situation in which a statistical tie is unlikely.
In the prompted scenario, Datafolha accepted up to two names from each respondent, since voters will choose two Senate candidates this year. In the previous poll, released on August 21, the four were in a quadruple tie: Arraes had 15%, Costa 14%, Mendonça Filho 12% and Eduardo da Fonte 11%. Arraes gained three points and Costa two, while Eduardo da Fonte dropped one and Mendonça Filho held steady.
How voters split their two votes
Datafolha asked separately who voters would pick for the first seat and for the second, as G1 reports. For the first seat, Arraes has 21%, Costa 18% and Mendonça Filho 17%, while Eduardo da Fonte falls to 8%. For the second seat, Arraes leads with 15%, followed by Costa with 13%, Eduardo da Fonte with 12% and Mendonça Filho with 7%.
Further back come Túlio Gadêlha of the PSD with 5%, and Carlos Sant'Anna (Novo) and Pastor Gilvan Costa (Democrata) with 2% each. Three candidates have 1% each, and two scored zero. Blank, spoiled or no votes add up to 22%, and undecided voters to 10%. In the unprompted question, where no names are read, 58% cannot name a candidate; Arraes and Costa lead with 8%.
Methodology and what comes next
Datafolha interviewed 1,204 people aged 16 or older between September 8 and 10, with a 95% confidence level. The poll is registered with the electoral court under numbers PE-04411/2026 and BR-05923/2026. Voting takes place in October, alongside Brazil's presidential election. Before then, the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) still has to rule on Pastor Gilvan Costa, whose candidacy was rejected by the electoral court even as he remained on the list shown to respondents, according to G1.