🗳 Election Observatory: Sep. 29

— by Paulo Abrão, executive director of the Washington Brazil Office

With six days to go before the vote, Brazil’s presidential election remains open, but the room for movement is narrowing. The Quaest poll released yesterday placed Lula at 39% and Flávio Bolsonaro at 34% in the first round, while the two are tied at 42% in a potential runoff on October 25. 

More important than the overall fluctuation is the movement within the electorate: undecided voters fell from 10% to 5%; Lula gained among women, Catholics, and independents; and polarization deepened. Among women, 47% say they fear the Bolsonaro family returning to power more than 37% fear Lula remaining in office. Strategic voting, rejection, and fear, therefore, enter the final week as possible forces concentrating the vote. 

The contest is no longer only about persuading those who have not yet decided how they will vote, but also about ensuring that each side’s own voters actually turn out. Lula and Flávio both register rejection rates above 50% under Quaest’s methodology, and O Globo has highlighted the risk of higher abstention in a campaign perceived as generating limited enthusiasm. In 2022, more than 32 million voters did not cast a ballot. In a close election, territorial mobilization and willingness to vote may matter as much as persuasion. However, there is no solid basis for saying which side would be more affected by lower turnout. 

The government has entered the final stretch with measures carrying strong social and electoral impact: restrictions on betting platforms, debt renegotiation programs, and increases in social benefits. Historically, the Workers’ Party has won every presidential election it contested while occupying the Planalto Palace in 2006, 2010, and 2014. That does not predict the outcome in 2026. Still, it helps explain why the campaign is seeking to associate Lula with the capacity to act as president and to reconnect with an identity rooted in trade unionism, labor, and social policies. Quaest itself recorded gains for the president among women, Catholics, and lower-income voters after this renewed offensive. 

The campaign is taking place in an environment where no one can precisely measure the electoral impact of WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, or AI-generated content. Meta temporarily suspended Lula’s Facebook advertising account ten days before the vote and restored it later the same day, without publicly explaining the reason. The episode does not prove partisan interference by the platform, but it shows how private decisions by technology companies can take on political significance. Flávio, meanwhile, confirmed that he will attend the TV Globo debate this week even if Lula does not, and has begun publicly challenging him to appear. 

Lula has intensified efforts to associate Flávio with Banco Master and Daniel Vorcaro. Flávio continues to link Lula, his inner circle, and the Workers’ Party to investigations and scandals. With electorates already strongly consolidated, familiar accusations may have limited impact, but a new, verifiable revelation could still shift the agenda in the final days. The 2026 campaign has repeatedly shown that scandals can produce rapid shifts.

Democratic lawmakers in the United States have formally pressed the Trump administration to commit to recognizing Brazil’s election result, regardless of the winner. The letter from 31 lawmakers, including Senator Bernie Sanders, asks the State Department for answers by October 1. At the same time, Lula’s campaign has incorporated sovereignty and criticism of Trump into its electoral messaging. The central question will be how to distinguish external political support from any potential use of foreign state or economic instruments to influence the contest.

The controversy over the status of Our Lady of Aparecida as Brazil's patron saint showed how a religious issue can spread across social media and, within days, produce conflicting decisions between the Superior Electoral Court and the Supreme Court. 

Quaest recorded significant movement toward Lula’s candidacy among Catholics and women during the controversy, although it is not possible to attribute those shifts to any single cause. The episode also revealed another risk: the judicial dispute over disinformation has begun to fuel accusations of institutional interference in the electoral process.

The final week, therefore, begins with fewer undecided voters, but not necessarily fewer possibilities for movement. Strategic voting, turnout, government measures, scandals, digital platforms, foreign interference, and culture-war issues can still shift margins. What remains uncertain is how much each political camp can mobilize, recover, or lose before the polls close on Sunday.

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On Oct. 4, The Brazilian Report and the Brazil Office Alliance are joining forces for a live Election Night broadcast. We’ll break down the campaign’s defining issues, unpack the results as they come in and, most importantly, look ahead to what they mean for Brazil’s political future.

We go live at 5 pm Brasília time — 4 pm EDT, 8 pm GMT.

An unproven rumor that Flávio Bolsonaro would revoke Our Lady of Aparecida's status as Brazil's patron saint is dogging the far-right candidate into the campaign's final week. He calls it a lie and nothing backs it up, yet his team has treated it as a five-alarm fire.

The spark was a Sep. 24 GloboNews segment in which analyst Maria Cristina Fernandes described bishops' unease over evangelical efforts to demote the saint. A body linked to the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (CNBB) has cataloged nearly 60 far-right attacks on the Catholic faith since 2018.

Years of fixation on evangelical voters have obscured a larger bloc. Half of Brazilians identify as Catholic, against 29% evangelical, and Catholics prefer President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva 45% to 33%, Datafolha found. Aparecida's feast day, a national holiday, also lands on Oct. 12, eight days after the first round.

Justice André Mendonça of the Superior Electoral Court ordered platforms to scrub more than 1,000 links, which ended up including a video from Aparecida's own national sanctuary. Supreme Court Justice Flávio Dino later reinstated deleted posts in a case he was never randomly assigned. Bolsonaro now blames the Workers' Party and "people inside the CNBB." 

Tabata Tesser, of the Institute for the Study of Religion (ISER), told The Brazilian Report she foresees no massive Catholic exodus, but "more polarization and some erosion among undecided voters."

President Lula signed two provisional decrees on Sep. 25 aimed at cash-strapped households, nine days before the first round. One outlaws online betting. The other launches Desenrola 3.0, the third edition of his signature debt-relief program.

The betting ban bars sites from taking wagers or advertising, with blocking set for Oct. 6. Brazilian households lost a net BRL 62.5 billion to betting companies in 2025, and polls show most voters want tighter rules, especially women and evangelicals, a group that has long resisted Lula.

Desenrola 3.0 makes the federal government a buyer of defaulted loans. It will acquire portfolios at discounts of at least 90% and pass the full cut to debtors. Spending is capped at BRL 15 billion, and officials hope to reach up to 15 million of the 83.9 million Brazilians in default.

Both measures target voters' wallets, and neither takes full effect before the first round. Discounted bills arrive only in February 2027. The betting decree also dies unless Congress, where the gambling lobby holds sway, approves it within 120 days. [Inference] Lula is campaigning on announcements only a sitting president can make.

São Paulo Governor Tarcísio de Freitas on Monday urged conservatives to consolidate behind Flávio Bolsonaro and defeat President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the Oct. 4 first round. Romeu Zema and Ronaldo Caiado refuse to quit, but their supporters may not wait. Novo's Marina Helena already backs Flávio tactically, and pollster Maurício Moura sees "homestretch anti-PT sentiment" lifting the field's most-rejected candidate into a tie with Lula. A runoff remains likeliest, yet turnout and the tally of blank or spoiled ballots could still hand either frontrunner an outright win.

Flávio Bolsonaro's campaign, reportedly braced for a pre-election bombshell, took a blow from news site PlatôBR. Drawing on files kept by a former business partner, the outlet alleges that a lawyer friend bought Flávio a BRL 305,000 Rolex, that allies bankrolled parties with escorts, and that Flávio discussed a client's case with Supreme Court Justice Kassio Nunes Marques. He has dismissed the ex-partner's claims as "unfounded." The files hint at influence-peddling but prove nothing. Stronger evidence could emerge from a Federal Police review of devices seized in the probe into funding for Dark Horse, the Jair Bolsonaro biopic. No one knows whether it will arrive before Sunday.

Meta knocked the investigative series "Revelando" off Instagram last week, a move likely to amplify the episode it was meant to bury. Hosted by comedian Fabio Porchat, the installment maps ties between embattled Banco Master, the Lagoinha Baptist Church, and politicians including presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro, a senator, and Congressman Nikolas Ferreira.

Meta cited an unspecified breach of its standards, then reinstated the account and apologized after an internal review. By then, the teaser had logged 6 million views, and the full episode had topped YouTube's Hype chart within a day. Banker Daniel Vorcaro and his brother-in-law, Fabiano Zettel, remain in pretrial detention. The takedown handed an independent production a censorship storyline days before the vote.