Brazilian leftist leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva maintains a solid lead going into Sunday's presidential race against far-right incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro and is within sight of an outright victory, a fresh poll showed on Saturday.

A CNT/MDA poll published on Saturday said Lula would win 48.3% of the valid votes, putting him statistically within reach of taking half of the votes, which would avoid a bruising run-off. The poll has a margin of error of 2.2 percentage points.

If no one among the 11 candidates gets more than 50% of votes, excluding blank and spoiled ballots, the two front-runners - almost certainly Lula and Bolsonaro - would go to second round vote on October 30.

The MDA poll commissioned by the national transport lobby CNT shows Bolsonaro has chipped away at half of Lula's lead, which is now down to 7.9 percentage points point (44.2% for Lula and 36.3% for Bolsonaro).

Two other major pollsters Datafolha and IPEC have projected Lula winning. 

(with inputs from Reuters)