Lula gains on a Senate win but still trails badly
Brazil's runoff is 25 October and Flávio Bolsonaro trades at 79% in the same event.
In one line: Flávio Bolsonaro beats Lula in the 25 October runoff, and Lula's 21% overstates a comeback the Senate workweek vote has not delivered.
Brazil's Senate approved a constitutional amendment on 15 October that cuts the maximum workweek from 44 to 40 hours without a cut in pay, CTV News reported that day. Lula backed the measure, which passed ahead of his 25 October runoff against Flávio Bolsonaro. The same day, myPlainview reported that fire counts in the Amazon have tripled since 4 October, the date of the first round, and that the fires have fuelled political attacks.
Traders lifted Lula's contract on Polymarket from 14% on 9 October to 21% on 16 October, up 7 points over the week and 4 points in the last 24 hours. It touched 26% on 15 October, the day of the vote, and has since fallen 5 points. Flávio Bolsonaro trades at 79% in the same event. Kalshi prices the same question at 21%, so two separate books agree. The rule covers "any potential second round", so the runoff decides it.
The Senate vote gave Lula something concrete to campaign on, and traders rewarded it for a day. The fall from 26% to 21% says traders took the vote as good news, not as a turn in the race. The margin contracts show what kind of Lula win they still see. A win by less than 4 points trades at 19%, a win by 4 to 8 points at 1%, and anything wider at 0%. Nearly all of Lula's chance rests on a narrow finish, and the third-place finisher's backing of Bolsonaro, reported in our 10 October digest, still stands.
Flávio Bolsonaro wins the 25 October runoff, and Lula's 21% overstates his chance, as his 12% did on 10 October. Lula's best case is that a 40-hour week without a pay cut is a plain gain for working voters, and the market already sees any Lula win as a narrow one; a visible swing towards him in the last days of the campaign would make that case right. The call is wrong if credible reporting declares Lula the winner after the 25 October count. A Bolsonaro win would hand Brazil's presidency to the opposition just as Lula's workweek cut clears the Senate.