🟢Polymarket - Brazilian presidential election 🇧🇷 Up until May, this was supposed to be a close race as both candidates sat around 40% probability of winning the presidential election on Polymarket. At this point, most polls expected a close race in the second round. However, this all changed due to the Banco Master scandal which caused Bolsonaro to drop down to 22-23% chance on Polymarket. Meanwhile, third-party candidate Renan Santos was overestimated despite failing to cross 10% in the polls. The market over-reacted and this was indeed a golden opportunity to bet on Bolsonaro at a cheap price. 🟢Why Bolsonaro is likely to overtake Lula soon Because the impact of the scandal was not strongly reflected in the polls. Bolsonaro did lose a few points in May, but the race for the presidency remained tight, especially since polls tend to shift significantly during the election campaign. And in the last few weeks, the polls have tightened and now have the candidates running neck and neck. On top of that, many elements indicate that this will likely be a very close race: -Strong left-right polarization -Already a close race in 2022 -Both candidates have a similar 50% disapproval rate 🟢However, there is one point that weighs in favor of Bolsonaro, at least in the first round of the election: -Lula is the incumbent president in a heavily polarized system. Incumbents are less likely to be re-elected in such scenarios. For example, the incumbent party lost power in the US in 2024 and Colombia in 2026. Or even France in 2012. This really reminds me of the US presidential election of 2024 with Biden being the incumbent. 🟢To sum up, as election day gets closer, the huge opportunity to buy Bolsonaro below 33% is now gone. He'll most likely overtake Lula in the next few days and have a "honeymoon" period due to the opinion polls being more and more favorable to him. In the end, the first-round results on October 4 will of course give the first major indication as to where this is going, as a second round is now almost guaranteed.