According to Durigan's "plebiscite," the ban on betting did not win Lula any votes.
Finance Minister Dario Durigan chose the yardstick. When voting on Sunday (4), in São Paulo, he compared the first round of elections to a popular consultation on the provisional measure that banned online betting in the country.
“There’s no time to highlight a controversial topic that stirs passions, like the election period. Does Brazil want to have gambling or not? The right wing is saying it’s important to maintain some kind of gambling in the country. Lula issued a decree that is currently being used as a kind of plebiscite. People are going to the polls to decide whether or not they want to have gambling,” the minister told a journalist, in material released by the ministry’s press office.
Measured by Durigan's own criteria, the result indicates that the ban did not deliver the electoral gain the government sought. Senator Flávio Bolsonaro (PL) finished the first round with 56.104.503 votes (47,03% of valid votes), against 53.879.538 for President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT), who received 45,16%. The difference was 2.224.965 votes, or 1,87 percentage points. The two will compete in the second round on October 25th. Lula, who led the first-round polls throughout the campaign, is now behind.
Campaign flag
MP 1.394 was announced on September 25th, nine days before the vote. According to the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo, the president decided to use the issue as the theme for the final stretch, and an event with artists in Rio displayed the phrase "Flávio is betting. Lula is the way" on a screen. The calculation was based on significant numbers: 62% of those interviewed by Quaest approved of the restriction on online betting, and an Atlas/Bloomberg survey showed 75% support for the ban.
However, support for the measure did not translate into votes in the same proportion. In the Datafolha poll conducted from September 8th to 10th, before the provisional measure, Lula had 43% of the valid votes. He finished the first round with 45,16%, just over two points higher, within the margin of error of the survey. A measure supported by up to three-quarters of the electorate did not significantly shift the president's support.
What the research showed
The first poll after the announcement suggested some relief. In the Quaest poll of September 28th, Lula fluctuated from 37% to 39% and Flávio from 33% to 34%, with a tie at 42% in the second-round simulation. Government approval rose from 44% to 46%, with disapproval at 49%. All fluctuations were within the margin of error, and even at that point the poll did not show a significant gain for the president because of the dispute.
It was the opponent who gained ground. Flávio Bolsonaro, who appeared with around 37% of the valid votes in the September polls, reached 47,03% at the ballot box, ten points higher, concentrating the opposition vote that was dispersed among other candidates.
Flávio called the provisional measure electioneering.
Lula's opponent in the second round has already commented on the issue. On September 25th, the day of the announcement, Flávio Bolsonaro described the measure as "hypocritical, electioneering, and populist," in a conversation with journalists after a Military Police ceremony in Rio de Janeiro. The senator stated that there is no guarantee that the government will not legalize gambling again after the election and called the president "the father of Tigrinho," because it was Lula's government that regulated online gambling.
Flávio said that, if elected, he intends to ban online casinos, including the "tiger game," but keep fixed-odds sports betting operational. The candidate defended a clear distinction between the two modalities, although he declared himself personally against betting. Three days later, he returned to the subject and reminded that the ban could lose effect if the Provisional Measure is not approved by Congress.
The same line of reasoning is already appearing in the legislative process. The provisional measure has received at least 26 amendments, including proposals to exclude sports betting from the ban and to provide a transition period for sponsorship contracts of football clubs.
Cost without return
The government's gamble is backfiring. To uphold this stance, the Planalto Palace has abolished, through a provisional measure, a market that it itself regulated, is facing lawsuits in the Supreme Federal Court, and is pushing bettors towards illegal operators, who remain outside the scope of the prohibition.
There's also the fiscal aspect. As BNLData showed in ' The government that threatens to ban betting is the same one that projects billions from it in the 2027 Budget ', the same government that banned betting was counting on it in the Budget: the 2027 PLOA (Proposed Budget Law), sent to Congress on August 31st, projects R$ 6,69 billion in the four specific categories for fixed-odds betting. The actual revenue is even higher. According to the Federal Revenue Service's balance sheets, taxes on betting and lotteries totaled R$ 9,95 billion in 2025 and R$ 8,747 billion in just the first seven months of 2026, with auditors projecting that the year will close near R$ 16 billion, which would be a record. It is this revenue that the government gave up, without gaining the lead in the first round in return.
The result also alters the outlook for the provisional measure. A weakened government will have more difficulty mobilizing Congress to convert the text into law, and it only takes a abstention of deputies and senators for the measure to lose its validity. If Flávio Bolsonaro wins, the declared trend is the return of sports betting and the maintenance of the veto on online casinos, a modality that accounts for a significant portion of the operators' revenue.
Elections are not decided by a single issue, and the economy, security, and rejection all weigh heavily in voters' choices. But it was the government that treated the ban as a trump card, and the Finance Minister who presented it as a plebiscite. By that standard, voters did not respond as the government had hoped.
