Lula And Bolsonaro Face Off In Knife-Edge Contest As Brazilians Head To The Polls. Trump Is Watching ‘Very Closely’.
Polls have opened in the 2026 Brazilian general elections. Although gubernatorial, congressional and state elections are taking place today, the most-watched contest will be the presidential race.
The two main challengers, Brazilian President Lula of the left-wing Worker’s Party and Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, of the right-wing Liberal Party are neck-and-neck in the polls but offer radically different visions for the future of Brazil.
Jair Bolsonaro is currently under house arrest, serving a 27-year jail sentence handed to him for plotting a coup after losing the 2022 election to the incumbent Lula. The younger Bolsonaro, who has served as a senator since 2019, has pledged that he would grant his father a pardon if he were elected to office.
He has also adopted much of his father’s ideological platform; a Bolsonaro government would crack down on crime, loosen gun laws, cut regulations, reduce public spending and align Brazilian foreign policy closely with the U.S., the right-winger has promised.
Lula is emblematic of an opposing Brazilian political tradition. The 80-year old left-winger was president between 2003 and 2010, and has served as president since 2022. Lula also spent time imprisoned between 2018 and 2019, when he was convicted of corruption and money laundering, charges that were annulled in 2021 which Lula has always denied.
Lula’s campaign pledges include ensuring that the senior Bolsonaro serves his sentence, targeting wealthy crime bosses, improving healthcare and education, reducing Brazilian inequality levels through a series of social programs and protecting Brazilian sovereignty against outside intervention, especially by the U.S. under President Donald Trump, which Lula has accused of wanting to sway the elections in Bolsonaro’s favor to then “colonize” Brazil’s natural resources.
A series of polls released on Saturday showed Lula with a slight advantage over Bolsonaro in the first round of voting on Sunday. This, however, would not guarantee the octogenarian victory; if no candidate secures more than 50% of valid (non-annulled or blank) ballots in Sunday’s poll, the two frontrunners will contest a second round vote on October 25th.
None of the polls released on Saturday show either candidate reaching 50%, and the BBC’s Brazil poll tracker shows that the two candidates have both hovered around 40% in the run-up to the election.
Nearly 160 million Brazilians are eligible to vote, and voting is compulsory, meaning that turnout is likely to be high – turnout in the last three first-round presidential votes was approximately 80%.
The view from abroad
The U.S. embassy in Brazil suspended consular services on Friday, citing security reasons. The Australian embassy also closed on Friday, supposedly because of the U.S. alert.
The president of the Brazilian Worker’s Party Edinho Silva said that the closures were “one of Trump’s ways of trying to influence Brazilian public opinion” ahead of the election; Brazilian authorities reported finding no evidence of the alleged security threat.
Trump has not explicitly endorsed Bolsonaro despite the latter’s praise for the U.S. president on the campaign trail and his pledge to join the U.S.-led anti-crime alliance known as the “Shield of the Americas”.
Nevertheless, Trump has said that he is watching the Brazilian election “very closely” and he has a record of expressing displeasure at Jair Bolsonaro’s conviction. The Trump administration even sanctioned a judge who led investigations into Bolsonaro last year, although the sanctions have since been lifted. Trump has also called Flávio “a smart young man who loves his country”.
On the other hand, Trump has had a tumultuous relationship with Lula; the Trump administration maintains 25% tariffs on billions of dollars worth of Brazilian imports and has been involved in various diplomatic spats with Lula, but the president has also said that he and Lula have “excellent chemistry”.
Regardless of Trump’s formal lack of endorsement, a Bolsonaro victory would likely strengthen U.S. influence in Latin America, which has been reinforced by a string of election victories of pro-Trump candidates in Chile, Honduras, Colombia, Peru and elsewhere.
This would boost the U.S. administration’s embrace of the “Donroe Doctrine”, a U.S. national security strategy which asserts that the U.S. should have strategic primacy in Latin America.
Critics of the doctrine warn that a Bolsonaro victory would weaken Brazilian sovereignty and increase the possibility of Brazil becoming subordinate to the U.S., restricted to its sphere of influence.
Wall Street expects Brazilian currency, stocks and bonds to rally if Bolsonaro wins; Bolsonaro is the markets’ preferred candidate given his promise of a tighter fiscal policy. Brazil’s debt-to-GDP ratio has reached 81.9%, a more than 10% increase compared to when Lula took office. JPMorgan analysts say a Bolsonaro win could lift MSCI Brazil by 21% to 41%.
