Bolsonaro's Son Closes In on Lula – New Poll Boost Shakes Up Brazil's Election Campaign

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is seeing his lead shrink ahead of this fall’s presidential election. A new poll shows that right-wing candidate Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, has significantly increased his support and is now approaching the incumbent president.

According to the poll by Nexus/BTG Pactual, Lula receives 41 percent of voter support in the first round, while Flávio Bolsonaro reaches 37 percent. In the previous poll, Lula had 42 percent and Bolsonaro 33 percent, meaning the opposition candidate has narrowed the gap by five percentage points in a short period.

If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the votes on October 4, a second round will follow between the two leading candidates. Previous polls showed Lula with a clearer lead, but recent surveys point to a much closer race and an increasingly polarized campaign.

Flávio Bolsonaro is a senator and son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is himself unable to run in the election. At the same time, Lula is conducting his campaign focusing on economic reforms, social policy, and Brazilian independence in foreign affairs.

Flávio Bolsonaro took over as the Brazilian right’s presidential candidate after his father was barred from running. Jair Bolsonaro was declared ineligible in 2023 to stand for election until 2030 after Brazil’s electoral court ruled that he had abused his position and state media by questioning the country’s electoral system without evidence to foreign ambassadors.

Jair Bolsonaro. Photo: Fabio Rodrigues Pozzebom/Agência Brasil, CC BY 2.0

Lengthy Prison Sentence

The former president has since been put on trial and convicted for his role in alleged attempts to overturn the election results after the 2022 presidential election. Brazil’s Supreme Court found him guilty of, among other things, attempted coup, attack on the democratic rule of law, and leading a criminal organization.

He is now serving a long prison sentence and had previously been held under house arrest with extensive restrictions.

Despite the conviction, Jair Bolsonaro continues to play a central role within the Brazilian right. He has openly supported his son’s candidacy, and the campaign has largely been built around promises to continue the policies that defined Bolsonaro’s presidency from 2019 to 2022.

Brazilian courts have simultaneously scrutinized the former president’s continued efforts to influence the campaign, including an AI-generated campaign appearance that sparked legal debate.