Polls show Lula support steady, raising hopes of outright win

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva rolled into the final week ahead of Brazil’s presidential election, with one poll showing he has the support for a first-round win while another has him inching ever closer to an outright victory on Sunday.

The front-runner would take 52 percent of valid votes, while incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro would take 34 percent both unchanged from a week ago, according to a survey from Ipec published Monday evening. Earlier in the day, a poll released by FSB Pesquisa showed Lula taking 48 percent of valid votes in the first round from 47 percent previously. Boslonaro held steady at 37 percent, the poll found.

If a candidate doesn’t take more than 50 percent of the ballot after removing both null and blank votes, the race will go to a run-off on October 30.

Lula’s advance fell within the FSB Pesquisa poll’s two point margin of error, but it added to evidence found in a slew of recent surveys showing the former head of state gaining steam. Only about two percent of voters have yet to pick a candidate, though FSB Pesquisa found some 20 million could switch their preference at the last-minute.

“The number of voters who are still willing to change their voting decision in this final stretch is enough to change the outlook, which today points to a second round,” Marcelo Tokarski, director of the polling firm, wrote in a statement.

Candidates other than the current and former president hold 14 percent of voter preference combined in the first round, the poll found.

Andrei Roman, the head of Atlasintel, cautions that support for Lula, 76, may have peaked. The pollster also placed the former president garnering around 48 percent of support in the first round, according to its latest public survey released last week.

Support for third- and fourth-placed candidates, Ciro Gomes and Simone Tebet, is “collapsing,” Roman said in an interview. “What we are seeing is angst around Lula winning in the first round.”

Gomes, a left-wing former governor, has made nods to conservative voters, and more of his backers are now migrating to Bolsonaro, Roman said. While not a majority, “there is a sizeable share that is opposed to Lula.”

Even so, Atlas has doubled the odds that Lula wins in the first round, raising chances to 30 percent from 15 percent from a month ago.

The FSB poll, commissioned by investment bank BTG Pactual, interviewed 2,000 Brazilians between September 23 and 25. Ipec spoke with 3,008 people on September 25 and 26. The Ipec poll had a margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points.