A Quaest poll released on Wednesday (Sept. 16) shows that 49% of Brazilians do not consider President Lula, of the Workers' Party, an honest politician. When the person being judged is Flávio Bolsonaro, of the PL party and son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, 42% give the same answer.
In the other direction, 28% of respondents called Lula honest, and 23% said the same of Flávio. The survey was commissioned by Globo and the newspaper O Globo. It interviewed 2,004 people aged 16 and over across Brazil between Sept. 10 and 13. The margin of error is two percentage points, with a 95% confidence level, and it is registered with Brazil's electoral court, the TSE, under number BR-03607/2026.
The question
"Based on what you have seen or heard, is the candidate an honest politician, a dishonest one, or do you not know him well enough to say?"
The question covered all six presidential candidates. For Lula, 23% said they did not know him well enough to answer or declined to respond. For Flávio, that share is larger: 35%. Among the other four names, the best honesty score belongs to Augusto Cury of Avante, with 17%, followed by Ronaldo Caiado of the PSD with 14% and Romeu Zema of Novo with 13%. Renan Santos of Missão has 6%. For those four, between 77% and 86% of respondents said they did not know the candidate well enough to judge.
How different groups see the two
According to the g1 news site, the view that Lula is honest reaches 69% among his supporters and 45% in the Northeast. The opposite view prevails in the Southeast (61%), among evangelical voters (59%) and on the non-Bolsonarist right (85%). Flávio is seen as honest by 60% of Bolsonarists and 30% of evangelicals. The Northeast also holds the strongest rejection of the PL candidate: 55% there say he is not honest, and the share rises to 73% on the non-Lulist left.
The release came one day after a session of Brazil's Supreme Court that ended without a final ruling on Justice Alexandre de Moraes. According to g1, the bench voted 4-3 to try the cases of Moraes and of Justice André Mendonça separately, and a request by Justice Flávio Dino for more time suspended the outcome. The poll's fieldwork ended on Sept. 13, two days before the session, so the numbers do not capture any reaction to it.
The first round of the election is set for Oct. 4. The court's ruling remains pending, and the crisis at the Supreme Court is a central theme of the race between Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro.