Brazil’s Lula and Flavio Bolsonaro are neck and neck in presidential runoff, poll finds

SAO PAULO, April 28 (Reuters) – Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Senator Flavio Bolsonaro were tied in a simulated run-off, an AtlasIntel/Bloomberg poll showed on Tuesday, ahead of this year’s presidential election.

• Right-wing challenger Bolsonaro would receive 47.8% of the vote in a second round of voting, compared with 47.5% for the leftist incumbent.

• In a March poll, Bolsonaro had 47.6% to Lula’s 46.6%.

• A BTG Pactual/Nexus poll on Monday had also shown the two frontrunners were statistically tied.

• In two first-round simulations, Lula was expected to win between 44.2% and 46.6% of the vote, while Bolsonaro would take between 39.3% and 39.7%, depending on other candidates.

• In Brazil, if no candidate gets more than 50% of valid votes, the two frontrunners go to a second-round vote, which has happened in every election since 2002.

• Latin America’s largest economy will hold general elections in October.

• Markets have tracked polls closely since former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is under house arrest, endorsed his son Flavio, 44, in December.

• The 80-year-old Lula, who defeated the elder Bolsonaro in 2022, will seek a fourth non-consecutive term as president.

• AtlasIntel surveyed 5,008 people between April 22 and 27. The poll has a margin of error of 1 percentage point in either direction.

(Reporting by Eduardo Simoes and Gabriel Araujo; editing by Barbara Lewis)