Late Right-Wing Surge, Banking Scandal and Economic Pain Fuel Flavio Bolsonaro's Outperformance in Brazil's First Round

Brazil's presidential race has been thrown wide open after Sen. Flavio Bolsonaro outperformed pre-election polling and edged ahead of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in the first round of voting, a result that has stunned analysts and reshaped the contest with three weeks still to go before the runoff.

Heading into Sunday's vote, most recent surveys had Lula starting a second round from first place, roughly three percentage points ahead of his right-wing rival. A runoff had long been expected, but the assumption was that the incumbent would enter it with the advantage. Instead, Bolsonaro captured about 47 percent of the vote against Lula's 45 percent, a reversal that raised immediate questions about what shifted in the campaign's final days and what the pollsters may have failed to capture.

According to Carlos Pereira, a political scientist at the Getulio Vargas Foundation think tank in Brazil, one key explanation lies in a late but decisive move by voters who had initially planned to back smaller right-wing candidates. Bolsonaro himself had openly counted on that dynamic, telling reporters on election day that he anticipated a "protest vote" from people who might otherwise have chosen another candidate but were united above all by their opposition to Lula.

Pereira noted that in typical Brazilian elections, voters tend to vote sincerely in the first round and strategically in the second, often consolidating behind a single candidate only after the initial ballot. This time, however, that consolidation appears to have happened early. Supporters who might have backed figures such as Ronaldo Caiado, the former governor of the central state of Goias, or Renan Santos, a businessman who founded the right-wing Free Brazil Movement, instead threw their weight behind Bolsonaro before the first round.

"They thought, 'Let's try to resolve this election right now,'" Pereira told Al Jazeera. "If you're gonna vote for Flavio anyway in the second round, why not vote for him right now?"

That early consolidation carries its own risks for Bolsonaro going forward. Political analyst Rafael Favetti told Reuters that some of the support the senator would normally have picked up only in a runoff had already been "front-loaded," potentially leaving him with less room to expand his coalition in the coming weeks.

A second factor identified by Pereira was the Banco Master scandal, a sprawling alleged banking fraud that shook both campaigns in the final stretch of the race and reached figures across the political spectrum. Among those caught up in the fallout was Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who had overseen the case that sent Bolsonaro's father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, to prison. De Moraes was accused of improper ties to Banco Master owner Daniel Vorcaro after documents surfaced appearing to show the banker seeking legal advice from the justice. De Moraes has denied the allegations.

Pereira suggested that connection may have served as a late trigger for some voters. Bolsonaro's supporters have long viewed Moraes as a political ally of Lula, and Flavio himself sought to draw a direct line between the two on the campaign trail earlier this year, declaring that "anyone voting for Lula is voting for Alexandre de Moraes." A September Datafolha poll found that 34 percent of Brazilians associated the Banco Master scandal more with the left, compared with 27 percent who linked it more to the right.

Andre Pagliarini, a professor of history and international studies at Louisiana State University and author of a book on Lula, agreed that the scandal may have damaged the president. He argued that a campaign dominated by a "spectacular, unceasing scandal involving seemingly the entire political class" played directly to Bolsonaro's strengths as an "anti-institutional insurgent." Pagliarini also pointed to an irony at the heart of the episode: Flavio Bolsonaro himself was directly implicated in the Banco Master affair in ways the president was not. The younger Bolsonaro is under investigation over allegations that he sought money from Vorcaro to finance a film about his father, accusations he denies.

Yet neither analyst interpreted the result as a wholesale failure of the polling industry. For Pagliarini, the bigger surprise was the sheer scale of support for the right, which stretched well beyond the presidential contest. Bolsonaro finished nearly four percentage points higher than his father did in the first round of the 2022 election, while his Liberal Party emerged as the largest bloc in Brazil's Senate. The right also performed strongly in gubernatorial races and made significant inroads in the southeast of the country.

"There clearly was a powerful information environment around Flavio that allowed his campaign to keep its message in front of voters even as the mainstream press exposed scandal after scandal," Pagliarini said. "If anything, the polls underestimated the commitment of voters already leaning right."

Beyond the immediate surprises of the first round, the outcome points to a deeper challenge facing Lula and the Brazilian left: a widespread perception among voters that the government is not delivering enough, particularly on the economy and public security. On paper, the president can point to a series of favorable indicators, including record-low unemployment, falling inequality and easing inflation. But those numbers have not translated into a sense among many Brazilians that daily life is becoming more manageable, as households continue to feel squeezed by high food prices and mounting debt.

A September poll by Quaest found that nearly half of those surveyed believed the economy had worsened, underscoring the gap between macroeconomic data and lived experience that Lula must now confront. With the runoff approaching, the president faces the difficult task of reversing the momentum Bolsonaro gained in the final days of the first round while addressing the economic anxieties that helped drive it.