Lula’s Reelection Was Fraud, Say 42% of Brazilians in New Poll

BRASILIA — More Brazilians disapprove of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva than approve of him, and 42.2 percent say the Oct. 25 runoff that gave him a fourth term was tainted by fraud, according to an AtlasIntel/Bloomberg poll released Friday. The survey of 4,946 voters, taken Nov. 5 to 9 with a margin of error of two percentage points, puts disapproval at 50.3 percent against 47.7 percent approval.

The electoral court gave Lula 51.8 percent of the valid vote. Two weeks later, 50.3 percent of the country disapproves of him, and four in ten voters say the official count does not match what they entered into the machines. Nobody in Brasília has explained how both numbers describe the same electorate.

AtlasIntel asked whether the result reflected the will of voters or whether fraud affected the official figures of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE). Some 52.7 percent called it legitimate, 42.2 percent said there was fraud and 5.1 percent did not know. The doubt reaches beyond the losing camp: 72.5 percent of right-leaning voters who do not identify with the Bolsonaros say fraud occurred, as do 88.1 percent of Flávio Bolsonaro’s voters. Among Lula’s voters, 98.4 percent accept the count. The numbers revive the point made by Senator-elect Gustavo Gayer, who said Lula won with more disapproval than approval, and the questions about states where the ruling party elected no federal deputies.

The Flávio question

Flávio Bolsonaro, a senator and the eldest son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, lost the runoff 48.2 percent to 51.8 percent. A day later, Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes barred him from leaving Brazil and ordered him to surrender his passports in a money-laundering probe tied to betting businesses. Flávio flew to the United States with his family. The poll does not favor him: 52 percent say he disrespected the courts and fled the investigations, against 46 percent who say he was right to escape political persecution, a view a former Supreme Court justice has defended. Some 51.4 percent believe he took part in money-laundering schemes. Yet Moraes’s order splits the country, 48.9 percent fair to 48 percent unjust.

Asked who should now lead the right, right-leaning voters chose Tarcísio de Freitas, governor of São Paulo and Jair Bolsonaro’s former infrastructure minister, with 33.2 percent, ahead of Flávio with 30.1 percent, a lead inside the margin.

Why it matters

The Lula regime starts a new term with a majority that disapproves of it and a large minority that rejects the result keeping it in power, while its main opponent lives in the United States. That is the partner Washington will deal with for four years.

The record

Confirmed: the poll’s figures and method, the TSE’s official result and Moraes’s order. Not established: the poll measures what voters believe, not whether fraud took place, and no audit or court has found fraud in the 2026 count, which the TSE certified. Flávio’s allies call the investigation political persecution; he has not been convicted of any crime.

The regime will read 47.7 percent approval as a mandate. The telling figure is the 42.2 percent who say their vote was not counted as cast. A democracy can absorb a close election. It struggles when four in ten citizens doubt the machines and the institutions that run them answer with a certificate instead of an independent audit.

The Watch Post Daily will continue to follow this story. Sources: AtlasIntel/Bloomberg Latam Pulse poll (Nov. 13, 2026), as reported by Gazeta do Povo, InfoMoney, CNN Brasil and Diário do Poder; Superior Electoral Court (TSE) official results.

Featured image: Eleições 2026 – Segundo turno by Senado Federal, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.