Atlas Intel shows Lula's lead hardening, but the poll is really about Flávio's decline

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva leads Senator Flávio Bolsonaro 48.8% to 42.3% in a runoff, according to the latest Atlas Intel poll, which dropped this morning. The six-point gap is one of the president's most comfortable margins in months. It is also, on closer reading, less a story about Lula than about the man trailing him.

The survey arrives loaded with backstory. Atlas's previous poll was suspended by an injunction from Chief Electoral Justice Kassio Nunes Marques, who acted on a complaint from Flávio's campaign. That poll had asked respondents to react to an audio, revealed by The Intercept, of Flávio requesting money from Banco Master CEO Daniel Vorcaro to finance a film about his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro.