Brazil Votes Sunday With Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro Tied at 50% in Final Datafolha Poll After a Combative Last Debate

Brazilians vote Sunday in a presidential runoff between President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers' Party and Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro of the Liberal Party, with a Datafolha poll showing the two tied at 50% of valid votes each, Folha de S.Paulo reported. The poll's margin of error is two percentage points either way.

The valid-vote calculation excludes blank and null ballots, as Brazil's electoral court does when declaring results, and also excludes undecided voters, according to Folha. In the previous week's poll, Bolsonaro, the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, had 51% to Lula's 49%. Counting all responses, Bolsonaro had 47% and Lula 46%, a statistical tie, with 5% planning blank or null votes and 2% undecided.

Both candidates face high rejection: 46% of voters said they would not vote for the senator and 45% said they would not vote for the president, Folha reported. Asked about the Lula administration, 39% rated it bad or very bad, 36% good or very good and 24% average.

The candidates met Friday night in their final debate on TV Globo, two days before the vote, according to O Globo. The newspaper reported that both had adjusted strategy after a debate the previous week on the Band network drew a negative reaction for its string of insults and unanswered questions. Bolsonaro reached out to governors in different regions and praised programs from his father's government, avoiding a return to the idea of reversing his father's conviction for attempting a coup, O Globo reported. Lula revisited the Bolsonaro government's record on the COVID-19 pandemic and deforestation.

The sharpest moment came when Bolsonaro said the president "gives with one hand and takes with nine fingers," according to Agência Brasil, the state news agency. Lula lost the little finger of his left hand in 1964, at age 17, while working as a lathe operator. "He called me nine fingers. If there is anyone who knows what the world of work is, it's me," Lula said. "I will not allow a miliciano to call me nine fingers. You will have to apologize." Bolsonaro apologized: "Lula, if I offended you, I truly apologize to you," then resumed his criticism and objected to being called a miliciano, a term for members of Rio de Janeiro's paramilitary gangs.

Bolsonaro then asked whether Lula would apologize to homeless people, whose numbers he said had doubled under the current government, according to Agência Brasil. The agency noted that data from a Brazilian public policy observatory show 365,800 people were homeless in December 2025, an increase of 55% from 2022 rather than 100%, and that researchers say part of the increase may reflect changes in counting methods.

The candidates also traded accusations over Daniel Vorcaro, the jailed owner of Banco Master, BBC News Brasil reported. Bolsonaro accused Lula of receiving a bottle of whiskey worth about 500,000 reais, citing a Veja magazine report that messages obtained by the Federal Police show Vorcaro gave the president a bottle of Macallan 1945. Lula has said in a television interview that he did not know whether he received the gift. Lula countered that his opponent "created a banker and I made him a prisoner" and pointed to a contract of about 134 million reais that Bolsonaro negotiated directly with Vorcaro to finance "Dark Horse," a film about his father. Bolsonaro has described that relationship as "an investor with a private film," according to the BBC.

On crime, after Bolsonaro accused Lula of defending temporary prison release programs, Lula pointed to the presence in the studio of the mother of Ana Clara, a 5-year-old girl killed in 2021 in Niterói, O Globo reported. The suspect in that killing is a military police officer whose defense Bolsonaro took on as a lawyer when the case reached the Superior Court of Justice, according to the newspaper. "What leads a senator to defend a police officer who fired a rifle shot at a 5-year-old girl?" Lula asked. Bolsonaro called the death a tragedy that occurred during an exchange of gunfire and said he was confident the officer, who has not been tried, was not the shooter.

Lula also pressed Bolsonaro over a Federal Police inquiry into the ownership of an island in Angra dos Reis and renewed calls for him to waive bank secrecy, O Globo reported. Bolsonaro cited Lula's corruption convictions in the Lava Jato investigation, which the Supreme Federal Court later annulled, and an investigation into the president's son Fábio Luís for alleged influence peddling.

On the economy, Bolsonaro blamed the government for high household debt and said he would use the state bank Caixa Econômica Federal to buy and refinance bank debts, according to Agência Brasil. Lula said he had already sent a debt renegotiation proposal to the Senate and blamed high interest rates on the central bank. Bolsonaro said he would keep and expand social programs, including Bolsa Família, after Lula cited old social media posts in which he mocked the program.