Poll: Lula and Bolsonaro deadlocked in final week of election campaign

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and right-wing challenger Flávio Bolsonaro are running neck and neck as Brazil’s presidential race enters its closing days, a new poll showed.

Lula and Bolsonaro would each receive roughly 48 percent of the vote in a run-off scenario, according to an AtlasIntel survey conducted for Bloomberg News and published Tuesday. The results were little changed from last week.

The leftist president would earn about 45 percent of votes to Bolsonaro’s roughly 42 percent in the first round, the poll found. Brazilians will vote Sunday in the first round, with a run-off likely to follow on October 25. 

Polls have suggested that Lula and Bolsonaro, the eldest son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, are deadlocked in a contest that has been repeatedly upended by a massive bank fraud investigation weighing on both campaigns.

Bolsonaro is subject to a federal police probe related to his links to the banker at the centre of the case. Lula, meanwhile, has suffered from revelations tying the Supreme Court to the scandal.

The president has boosted benefits under the government’s flagship social program in a bid to seize momentum in the race’s final stages. Last week, he also banned online gambling and unveiled a plan to buy delinquent consumer debt from banks, his latest measures meant to help Brazilians deal with rising levels of household debt.

AtlasIntel surveyed 5,005 people from September 23-28. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus one percentage point.