President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is statistically tied with Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, and with former governors Ronaldo Caiado and Romeu Zema in simulated runoffs for Brazil's October presidential election. The numbers come from a survey by the polling institute Palver released on Monday (21) and reported by CNN Brasil.
In all three scenarios, the opponents are numerically ahead. Flávio Bolsonaro polls 47% of vote intentions to the president's 43%. Caiado, a former governor of Goiás, and Zema, a former governor of Minas Gerais, each stand at 44%, again against Lula's 43%. With a margin of error of three percentage points, the institute rates all three races as technical ties, the term Brazilian pollsters use when the gap falls inside the margin. Blank votes, null votes and abstentions add up to 9% in the scenario against Flávio Bolsonaro, 12% against Caiado and 11% against Zema, with 1% undecided in all three matchups.
The picture changes when the opponents are the writer Augusto Cury and Renan Santos, coordinator of the activist group MBL. Lula keeps 43% in both scenarios, against 35% for Cury and 34% for Santos. Blank votes, null votes and abstentions reach 20% and 21% respectively, with 2% undecided.
Methodology and the broader picture
Palver interviewed 5,000 voters between September 15 and 20 through digital recruitment. The margin of error is three percentage points either way, with a 95% confidence level. The institute paid for the survey with its own funds and registered it with the Superior Electoral Court, known as TSE, under protocol BR-00860/2026.
The round repeats the pattern of the institute's previous release, from September 9, when Flávio Bolsonaro stood at 46% to Lula's 44% and Caiado and Zema were also tied with the president. Other pollsters show a similar race. In a Datafolha survey from September 17, reported by g1, Lula has 46% and Flávio Bolsonaro 44% in a runoff, a gap inside that poll's two-point margin. Its breakdown shows Lula ahead in the Northeast, 62% to 31%, and the senator leading among evangelical voters, 60% to 32%, and in the South, 57% to 32%.
The first round takes place in October. If no candidate wins a majority of valid votes, the top two advance to a runoff at the end of the month, and the matchups Palver is now testing become the real contest for the presidency.