Every president who won reelection had a positive rating. Lula is still underwater.
Lula's approval improved from 43% to 46% in one month, with independent voters showing strongest gains, narrowing their negative balance from 16 to 5 percentage points. Independent voters will decide the 2026 election; they view Lula favorably after Trump meeting and Desenrola announcement, but low-income voters now see social benefits as rights rather than favors.
- Lula's approval rose from 43% to 46% in one month; net negative rating fell from 9 to 3 percentage points
- Independent voters' negative balance narrowed from 16 to 5 percentage points
- In first round, Lula leads with 39%, Flávio Bolsonaro at 33%; in runoff, they are tied at 42% and 41%
- Low-income voters now view social benefits as rights rather than favors, reducing their electoral impact
- About 25% of voters desire a third-way candidate, but political preferences are calcifying into two blocs
Brazil's Desenrola debt relief program boosts Lula's approval ratings among independent voters, but political analyst warns additional measures are needed to secure reelection amid economic perception gaps.
Felipe Nunes, the political scientist leading Quaest polling, stood in New York this week at the Brazil-USA Summit and offered a careful assessment of Brazil's 2026 presidential race: it remains genuinely uncertain who will win. But he also offered a historical observation that cuts to the heart of Lula's challenge. Every president who has successfully won reelection in Brazil, he noted, arrived at that moment with a positive approval rating. Not one has ever managed to secure a second term while underwater.
Lula is still underwater, though the water is rising. A Genial/Quaest survey released Wednesday showed his approval climbing from 43 percent to 46 percent over the past month, while disapproval fell from 52 to 49 percent. The government's net negative rating—the gap between approval and disapproval—shrank from nine percentage points to three. The trend line, which had been pointing downward, reversed. Something shifted.
That something appears to be the Desenrola program, the government's new debt renegotiation initiative, combined with Lula's recent meeting with Donald Trump. Among independent voters—those who identify with neither Lula's camp nor Jair Bolsonaro's—the movement was most pronounced. This group had carried a negative balance of 16 percentage points; it narrowed to five. Nunes emphasized that these swing voters, the ones who belong to neither political tribe, will ultimately decide the election. They are watching Lula's international standing, his ability to negotiate with both Washington and Beijing. They are also watching Desenrola, and many of them are deeply indebted and hopeful that the program might offer relief.
Yet Nunes offered a warning wrapped in measured language. Desenrola can provide a boost, he said, but it is not enough by itself to shift the race decisively in Lula's favor. The president faces structural headwinds that no single policy can solve. One is the erosion of social spending as an electoral tool. Low-income voters, who once saw programs like subsidized cooking gas and electricity assistance as favors bestowed by a generous government, now regard them as rights—entitlements that will persist regardless of who occupies the presidency. This perception has drained these measures of their electoral potency. For a government that built much of its appeal on such programs, Nunes said, this represents an enormous problem.
Another challenge is the disconnect between economic reality and voter perception. Brazil's economy has performed reasonably well by objective measures, yet voters feel squeezed. They perceive that their cost of living has risen and their purchasing power has fallen. This gap between data and feeling produces what Nunes called an "enormous frustration"—a sense that the government has delivered nothing of value, even when the numbers suggest otherwise. It is a kind of political vertigo, where the ground beneath a government's feet feels unstable even when the foundation is sound.
The race itself remains sharply polarized. Lula leads in the first round with 39 percent of voting intentions, while Flávio Bolsonaro, the senator and son of the former president, stands at 33 percent. Together they command 72 percent of the electorate. In a hypothetical runoff, they are technically tied—Lula at 42 percent, Flávio at 41 percent—a stalemate that has held for three consecutive months. About a quarter of voters express a desire for a third option, someone from outside the two-candidate system who could criticize both camps and expose the failures of the political establishment. But Brazil is experiencing what Nunes called a "calcification" of political preferences, a hardening into two opposing blocs that makes the emergence of a genuine alternative increasingly unlikely.
Lula's vulnerability, Nunes suggested, stems partly from fatigue. He has been running for or holding high office since 1989, and voters sense a weariness in his presence. Flávio Bolsonaro's vulnerability is the inverse: he is seen as untested, a young man who has never administered anything of consequence. The election, then, will be a contest between exhaustion and inexperience, between someone who has been in the arena too long and someone who has barely entered it. What remains to be seen is whether voters perceive Flávio as genuinely moderate or whether Lula can find a way to reinvent himself. On those perceptions, the presidency may turn.
Citações Notáveis
Not one president in Brazilian history has ever secured reelection while carrying a negative approval rating.— Felipe Nunes, Quaest CEO
Desenrola can provide a boost, but the government needs more than that to shift the race decisively.— Felipe Nunes, Quaest CEO
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why does Nunes keep returning to independent voters? What makes them different from the rest of the electorate?
They're not locked into either tribe. A Lula voter will vote for Lula almost no matter what. A Bolsonaro voter will do the same. But independents are actually paying attention—to the economy, to what the government delivers, to how the president carries himself on the world stage. They're the ones who can move.
And they moved toward Lula after the Trump meeting and Desenrola announcement?
Specifically among independents, yes. Their negative balance dropped from 16 points to 5. They saw Lula negotiating with Trump, saw a debt relief program aimed at people drowning in obligations. For a moment, it looked like something was happening.
But Nunes says it's not enough. Why not?
Because Desenrola is a program, not a solution to the deeper problem. Voters feel poor even when the economy is growing. They see their electricity bill, their grocery receipt. A debt renegotiation helps some people, but it doesn't change the feeling that you're losing ground.
What's this about social benefits losing their power?
Lula built his political brand on giving things to poor people—gas subsidies, electricity assistance. But voters have stopped seeing these as gifts from a generous leader. Now they see them as rights, things that belong to them. So even if Lula delivers them, there's no political credit. And if a future president takes them away, voters won't blame that president—they'll blame the system.
That sounds like a trap Lula set for himself.
In a way, yes. He succeeded so well at establishing these programs that they became normalized. The victory consumed itself. Now he's running on accomplishments that no longer feel like accomplishments.
What about Flávio Bolsonaro? What's his weakness?
He's never run anything. He's a senator, which is a legislative position. Voters don't know if he can actually govern. Lula, whatever else you say about him, has been tested in office multiple times. Flávio is a question mark. The election becomes: do you want experience or do you want change?