MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Bolsonaro narrows gap with Lula

Lula is still ahead in all polls

Brazil's incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro has narrowed the gap between him and former head of state Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva to seven percentage points less than two weeks ahead of the Oct. 30 runoffs, according to a survey released earlier this week.

While Lula is still ahead in all polls, he had been forecast to have a 14-point lead for the first round, which turned out to be barely above 5 %. Roughly, that means a 9 % margin of error. Therefore Bolsonaro closing in is to be interpreted in such a scenario, it was explained.

The candidate of the leftwing Workers' Party (PT) would reach 50 % of the votes against Bolsonaro's 43 % on the Liberal Party's ticket, the Ipec study showed.

The same pollsters had announced last week that Lula would get 51 % of the votes against Bolsonaro's 42 %.

Two percent of those consulted admitted they were still to make up their minds, while 5 % would cast a blank vote, G1 reported.

Bolsonaro continues to have the highest rejection rate: 46 % of Brazilians say they would not vote for him at all, from last week's 48 %, while rejection of Lula dropped from 42 % to 41 %.

In southern Brazil, 52 % of voters say they would vote for Bolsonaro and 39 percent for Lula. In the northeast, on the other hand, 68 % of the people consulted said they would support the PT while only 26 % would vote for the rightwing candidate.

Bolsonaro is projected to win in the North with 52 % of the votes over Lula's 40 % and in other southern States where he has 53 % of the voting intention against Lula's 36 %, according to Folha.

In the first Oct. 2 first round, Lula obtained 48.4 percent of the valid votes, against Bolsonaro's 43.2 percent. In third place came Simone Tebet (MDB) with 4.2 %, followed by Ciro Gomes (PDT) with 3 %.