Former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva maintains a wide lead of about 20 points over the current president, Jair Bolsonaro, which would allow him to win the elections on October 2 in the first round, according to a poll published on Thursday.
The survey, prepared by the Datafolha Institute, gives the candidate of the Workers’ Party (PT) 47% of the voting intentions compared to 28% that the far-right leader would obtain.
In this way, the advantage of the progressive ex-governor (2003-2010) remains practically stable and now stands at 19 points compared to 21 in the previous May poll, which then gave Lula 48% and Bolsonaro 27%.
However, if the 7% of the blank and null votes pointed out by Datafolha are excluded and that the Electoral Justice does not take into account for the final calculation, Lula would win in the first round of the elections with 53% of the votes against the 32% of Bolsonaro, consolidating the anticipated scenario last May.
The poll, which has a margin of error of 2 points, reaffirms, on the other hand, the strong polarization between Lula and Bolsonaro, since no other candidate comes close to the two top favorites.
In third place appears the Labor leader Ciro Gomes, with 8% of the support (7% in May), and behind him are a series of center-right candidates who move between 1% and 2%, between them Senator Simone Tebet, of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB).
The survey was conducted between Wednesday and this Thursday from 2,556 face-to-face interviews in 181 cities in the country.
The result is in line with the rest of the polls published to date, which also foresee a comfortable victory for the progressive former president, at a time when Bolsonaro’s popularity is crumbling on various fronts.
The day before, former Minister of Education Milton Ribeiro and two evangelical pastors close to Bolsonaro were arrested on suspicion of having set up a corrupt plot that included extortion of mayors and payment of bribes to release resources from that portfolio.
However, a second instance judge today revoked the prison order against Bolsonaro’s former minister.
The economic outlook is also weak, with inflation of almost 12% which has sharply diminished the purchasing power of Brazilians and forced the Central Bank to raise official interest rates to 13.25%, its lowest level. high since December 2016.
The Bolsonaro government has tried unsuccessfully to contain the rise in fuel prices, which along with food are the products that have risen the most, with several changes in the Presidency of the state oil company Petrobras.
Likewise, it seeks to reverse the discontent between the officials, who demand the readjustment of their salaries, and the transporters, who make up the social base of support for Bolsonaro and have been affected by the rise in hydrocarbons, with measures that, for the moment, They don’t come off the paper.
The Bolsonaro administration also received harsh criticism this month for the disappearance and murder, in a remote area of the Amazon, of indigenist expert Bruno Pereira and British journalist Dom Phillips, whose bodies were only found days later after a poacher confessed. .
The tragedy crossed borders and reached the UN Human Rights Office, which denounced that Brazil’s initial response to find the whereabouts of Pereira and Phillips was "very slow" and that "there were even some derogatory comments" by some authorities.