Lula's lead over Bolsonaro narrows as second round approaches

Less than two weeks before the second round of the presidential elections in Brazil, scheduled for next October 30, the advantage of the Brazilian presidential candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, winner of the first round, over President Jair Bolsonaro has been reduced to 5 percentage points, according to a Genial/Quaest survey on Wednesday.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
19 October 2022 Wednesday 07:31
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Lula's lead over Bolsonaro narrows as second round approaches

Less than two weeks before the second round of the presidential elections in Brazil, scheduled for next October 30, the advantage of the Brazilian presidential candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, winner of the first round, over President Jair Bolsonaro has been reduced to 5 percentage points, according to a Genial/Quaest survey on Wednesday.

Former President Lula has a 47% voting intention, down from 49% last week, while Bolsonaro gained 1 point to 42%.

Pollsters were widely criticized after the first round for significantly underestimating support for Bolsonaro. The Genial/Quaest survey interviewed 2,000 people between October 16 and 18 and has a margin of error of 2 percentage points.

This Monday, another poll gave former president Lula da Silva 50% of the intention to vote and Bolsonaro 43%. The poll by the Ipec institute showed the candidates two points closer than in a poll conducted by the same company a week ago, which maintains the projection of Lula's victory in the ballot.

If only valid votes are taken into account, discarding blank and invalid votes, the progressive leader would obtain 54% of the votes, compared to 46% that his rival would receive.

In the first round of the presidential elections, held on October 2, former President Lula (2003-2010) was the most voted candidate, with 48.4% of the votes, and the current president seconded him with 43.2 %.

The data from the Ipec poll was more favorable to Lula than the latest survey by the Datafolha company, which places the leader of the Workers' Party with 49% of the intention to vote and Bolsonaro with 44%.

The polling firms have been widely questioned in Brazil for not having detected the strength of Bolsonaro and his allies in the first round of the elections.

The main polls predicted Lula's victory and Bolsonaro's second place, but calculated that the difference between the two would be between 10 and 15 percentage points.

Following the Oct. 2 elections, several Bolsonaro allies have called for an investigation of the poll failures and have also suggested that the far-right leader's supporters not respond to polling firms.

The Ipec survey has a margin of error of two percentage points and was prepared with 3,008 interviews conducted between last Saturday and this Monday in 184 municipalities throughout Brazil.

For this reason, part of the interviewees participated in the study after the debate held on Sunday night between Bolsonaro and Lula, which is the first face-to-face meeting prior to the second round.