Brazil’s far-right presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro, in intensive care after being stabbed at a campaign rally, kept his first-round lead in an election opinion poll on Friday, but a leftist rival from the Workers Party (PT) made solid gains.
Bolsonaro was backed by 26% of those surveyed, up two percentage points from the same poll published earlier this week, according to the Datafolha survey published by the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper.
The knife attack against Bolsonaro last week has further complicated Brazil’s most unpredictable election in three decades, with its most popular politician, jailed former president Lula da Silva, banned from running in the Oct. 7 vote due to a corruption conviction.
Lula’s hand-picked successor to stand for the PT is former Sao Paulo mayor Fernando Haddad, who jumped to 13% of support in Friday’s poll, up 4 points.
The poll indicates the PT’s strategy of transferring Lula’s massive appeal to the relatively unknown Haddad is bearing fruit. The party’s campaign rolled out advertising this week with the simple message: “Haddad is Lula.”
Lula’s backing is expected to propel Haddad into a likely Oct. 28 runoff vote, required if no candidate takes a majority in the first ballot.
The Datafolha poll showed that Bolsonaro, who has spent nearly three decades in Congress, and Haddad would be technically tied in a simulated second-round vote.
Bolsonaro would lose to all other major candidates in a runoff, the survey found.
A former army captain who favors easing gun control laws to fight crime, Bolsonaro has enraged many Brazilians with comments denigrating women, gays, blacks and indigenous people.
He has led the field from the outset in polls that excluded Lula, tapping into voter anger over political corruption.
But the polarizing nature of Bolsonaro means he has the highest rejection rate of all contenders, holding even at 44% on Friday. Haddad’s rejection rate is 26%, up 4 percentage points from Monday.
Support for center-left candidate Ciro Gomes, a former governor of Ceará state in Brazil’s poor northeast, stayed even at 13%. Business-friendly candidate Geraldo Alckmin saw his campaign continue to stagnate, with the poll indicating support of 9%. Environmentalist Marina Silva fell 3 percentage points to 8%.
Datafolha interviewed 2,820 people across Brazil on Thursday and Friday for the survey, which has a 2 percentage point margin of error.
Top Comments
Disclaimer & comment rulesA most likely Bolsonaro+Haddad+Evangelists Coalition:
Sep 18th, 2018 - 01:31 am +1https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DfgzV9dW0AEtahO.jpg
@DT
Sep 18th, 2018 - 05:47 pm +1Re slavery, ... what economic reasons are there to want to abolish it?
I would imagine that since slavery was not all that significant to the economy of the Northern States, they probably tried to rationalize the need to maintain it, and found little reason to...and might even have felt ashamed (?)... but even after the war, and slavery had been abolished, the blacks were not welcomed with open arms in the North...that was well before the segregation laws, but as far as the blacks were concerned, the whites already did not see them as equals....this sentiment grew until they decided to enact the laws to keep the blacks' in their places…(not nice but what went through their minds) ....
Thanks for demystifying “I hope they DO take over”…as quoted by TH, indeed out of context. But yes, I now remember why I said it (April 2014). In the first post I wrote “…it’s not too difficult to imagine what the PT has in store for Brazil …time will tell (context: 2014 presidential campaign coming up and an arrogant PT already showing its true colours…the infamous project of power). In the second post, I said, “ If push comes to shove (implying PT’s push for perpetuating themselves in power), “I hope they (the military) DO take over”. Quite simple, but TH used it, for as long as he could, trying to imply I was some right-wing nut. Thanks DT.
TH
feeling sorry for yourself, numb nuts ?
Graphical manipulation does come under my area of expertise...and I reckon the mug is real..
Sep 23rd, 2018 - 11:22 pm +1Just putting it out there...
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