AtlasIntel’s latest Pernambuco survey has produced a shared conclusion across contrasting political coverage: the 2026 governor’s race remains close, even as incumbent Governor Raquel Lyra of the PSD leads João Campos of the PSB in the poll’s headline simulations.

A left-leaning account foregrounded the uncertainty, calling the contest a “technical tie” between Lyra and the former Recife mayor.¹ In the first-round test, Lyra received 48.7% to Campos’s 45.6%; in a runoff simulation, she led 51.1% to 47.3%. With a stated margin of error of 2.2 percentage points, the report argued that Campos remains within statistical reach despite Lyra’s numerical advantage.¹

A right-leaning account reported the same topline figures and reached the same assessment: “considering the margin of error,” the two candidates are technically tied.² Its emphasis, however, was on the additional valid-vote calculations, which exclude blank, null and undecided responses. On that basis, Lyra led 50% to 46.8% in the first-round scenario and 51.9% to 48.1% in the runoff.²

The two accounts therefore differ less over the numbers than over how to read them. The first treats the margin of error as the defining fact; the second highlights Lyra’s lead across both total- and valid-vote measures while cautioning that polls are a snapshot rather than a prediction.²

AtlasIntel surveyed 1,793 Pernambuco voters online from September 11 to 16, under electoral registry PE-02989/2026. Smaller first-round preferences went to Ivan Moraes, Renan and Professora Camila, leaving the race largely defined by the two leading contenders.¹