MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
With ten weeks left Brazilian presidential race remains technically tied
With only two and a half months left for October 3 presidential election the ruling party candidate, Dilma Rousseff and Jose Serra from the opposition remain in a technical tie according to an opinion poll released over the weekend. The Datafolha poll showed Rousseff with 36% of voter intention against 37% for former Sao Paulo state Governor Serra. Read full article
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Disclaimer & comment rulesI wonder why Mercopress likes using unfavourable pictures to portray Ms Rousseff. And why it says Serra and R are tied when a poll divulged at the same time as that of Datafolha says otherwise. Well...
Jul 26th, 2010 - 09:06 am - Link - Report abuse 0R and S remain technically tied only for Datafolha. This institute has been divulging that same result ever since mid-May. And that is suspicious as public knowledge of R's campaign has significantly increased since then.
Datafolha came to the public eye when, in April, it divulged numbers that showed S had a 10-12% advantage over R. At that time two other polling institutes, Sensus and Vox Populi, showed two completely different results. Sensus showed a tie; Vox Populi, a slight advantage of 4% for Serra. It's noteworthy that even columinists of Folha de São Paulo - a daily that belongs to the same umbrella group as Datafolha, the Grupo Folha - couldn't explain the results Datafolha insisted in publishing. Then, a NGO, the Movimento dos Sem Mídia, presented to the Electoral Supreme Court a representation that asked the Electoral Public Ministry to oversee the polling procedures of the four greatest institutes - Ibope, Vox Populi, Datafolha and Sensus. By May, a month later, that terrific advantage S supposedly had over R has disappeared from Datafolha's newest numbers.
What I'm trying to say is that Datafolha's numbers are not trustworthy. They are biased, and biased in favour of Serra. Its results for some states - for instance, Rio de Janeiro and Pernambuco - contrast with all the results local insitutes have been publishing for those places.
Only one important poll. October 3.
Jul 27th, 2010 - 11:26 am - Link - Report abuse 0Commenting for this story is now closed.
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