The betting market on the outcome of Brazil’s 2026 presidential elections became agitated after the announcement of the pre-candidacy of Senator Flávio Bolsonaro (PL) last Friday (12/05).
The news caused the price of Governor Tarcísio de Freitas (Republicans), considered the favorite candidate of the Centrão and the financial market, to fall in the hours that followed.
After allies and interlocutors estimated that the move could be a “trial balloon” for the Bolsonaro clan, the São Paulo governor began to recover among punters in the following days. (see graph below).
According to data from the Polymarket platform, where operators bet based on their predictions about future events, including the Brazilian elections, the chances of Tarcísio winning the conflict were 25% as of the end of this Wednesday afternoon (10/12). Flávio Bolsonaro appears with 10.8%.
Both are behind President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT), who tops the forecast with 47%.
The data represents a recovery for Tarcísio, who fell from 36% to 19% last Friday, when Flávio’s pre-candidacy for president was announced. In the same interval, between 12 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. that day, the senator jumped from 1.6% to 16.5%.
As the days pass and Flávio’s hesitant declarations on the real chances of maintaining his pre-candidacy until the end, the senator’s rating diminishes.
On Sunday afternoon (12/07), after “son 01” said he could withdraw from the race, but there would be a “price” for that, Flávio’s odds on the betting platform dropped from 12% to 3%. During the same period, the São Paulo governor’s rating increased from 20% to 31%.
In the following days, in reaction to the senator’s new declarations that his candidacy would go through to the end, Flávio recovered and parked around 10%. Tarcísio, in turn, maintained a variation between 27% and 25%.
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