Poll Tracker: Brazil’s 2026 Presidential Election

This poll tracker was originally published on February 11, 2025, and has since been updated.

A rematch of sorts is brewing for Brazil’s 2026 presidential race. Incumbent leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2011, 2023-present) of the Workers’ Party (PT) is running for an unprecedented fourth term at the age of 80. His foe in the last election, ex-President Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2023), is ineligible to run after being indicted and imprisoned in September for plotting a coup.

But the Bolsonaro name will still be on the ballot. After speculation about who would carry the flag of Jair Bolsonaro’s far-right movement, the ex-president endorsed his son, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, as candidate for Liberal Party (PL). The two are polling neck and neck. In Americas Quarterly, Brian Winter writes that the "election now looks like a coin-flip."

Still, other right-wing leaders are eyeing the contest. Also in the running are two governors: Ronaldo Caiado of Goiás and Eduardo Leite of Rio Grande do Sul—both of whom won their posts in the same 2019 election that swept Bolsonaro into power. The two governors are all now members of the center-right Social Democratic Party (PSD), helmed by power broker Gilberto Kassab, who says he plans to mobilize his party behind a single candidate. Governor of Minas Gerais Romeu Zema, of the NOVO party, and Renan Santos of the Mission party, a political activism associated with the country’s 2013 protests. 

With months until the October 4 first round, how are Brazil’s 156 million voters viewing the contest?